THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 

IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


/ 


SYLVIA 
SCARLETT 


BOOKS  BY 
COMPTON   MACKENZIE 

SYLVIA    SCARLETT 
FLASHERS    MEAD 


HARPER  &   BROTHERS,   NEW   YORK 
[ESTABLISHED  1817] 


THE  EARLY  LIFE  AND  ADVENTURES  OF 

SYLVIA  SCARLETT 


By  COMPTON   MACKENZIE      %#         ** 

Author  of  "FLASHERS  MEAD"  "SINISTER  STREET"  "CARNIVAL"  ETC. 


HARPER     &     BROTHERS     PUBLISHERS 

NEW    YORK    AND     LONDON 


SYLVIA  SCARLETT 


Copyright,  1918,  by  Harper  &  Brothers 

Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 

Published  August,  1918 


PRELUDE 


2010459 


Prelude 


AT  six  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  Ash  Wednesday  in 
the  year  1847,  the  Honorable  Charles  Cunningham  sat 
sipping  his  coffee  in  the  restaurant  of  the  Vendanges  de 
Bourgogne.  He  was  somewhat  fatigued  by  the  exertions 
that  as  "lion"  of  the  moment  he  had  felt  bound  to  make, 
exertions  that  had  included  a  display  of  English  eccen- 
tricity and  had  culminated  in  a  cotillion  at  a  noble  house 
in  the  Faubourg  St. -Germain,  the  daughter  of  which  had 
been  assigned  to  him  by  Parisian  gossip  as  his  future  wife. 
Marriage,  however,  did  not  present  itself  to  his  con- 
templation as  an  urgent  duty;  and  he  sipped  his  coffee, 
reassured  by  the  example  of  his  brother  Saxby,  who,  with 
the  responsibility  of  a  family  succession,  remained  a 
bachelor.  In  any  case,  the  notion  of  marrying  a  French 
girl  was  preposterous;  he  was  not  to  be  flattered  into  an 
unsuitable  alliance  by  compliments  upon  his  French. 
Certainly  he  spoke  French  uncommonly  well,  devilishly 
well  for  an  Englishman,  he  told  himself;  and  he  stroked  his 
whiskers  in  complacent  meditation. 

Charles  Cunningham  had  arrived  at  the  Vendanges  de 
Bourgogne  to  watch  that  rowdy  climax  of  Carnival,  the 
descente  de  la  Courtille.  And  now  through  the  raw  air  they 
were  coming  down  from  Belleville,  all  sorts  of  revelers  in 
masks  and  motley  and  rags.  The  noise  of  tin  trumpets  and 
toy  drums,  of  catcalls  and  cocoricots,  of  laughter  and  cheers 
and  whistling,  came  nearer.  Presently  the  road  outside 
was  thronged  for  the  aristocrats  of  the  Faubourg  St.- 
Germain  to  alight  from  their  carriages  and  mix  with  the 
mob.  This  was  the  traditional  climax  of  Carnival  for 
Parisian  society:  every  year  they  drove  here  on  Ash  Wed- 
nesday morning  to  get  themselves  banged  on  the  head  by 
bladders,  to  be  spurted  with  cheap  scent  and  pelted  with 


x  Prelude 

sugar-plums,  and  to  retaliate  by  flinging  down  hot  louis 
for  the  painful  enrichment  of  the  masses.  The  noise  was 
for  a  time  deafening;  but  gradually  the  cold  light  of 
morning  and  the  melancholy  Lenten  bells  cast  a  gloom 
upon  the  crowd,  which  passed  on  toward  the  boulevards, 
diminishing  in  sound  and  size  at  every  street  corner. 

The  tall,  fair  Englishman  let  himself  be  carried  along  by 
the  exodus,  thinking  idly  what  excitable  folk  foreigners 
were,  but  conscious,  nevertheless,  of  a  warmth  of  intimacy 
that  was  not  at  all  disagreeable,  the  kind  of  intimacy  that 
is  bestowed  on  a  man  by  taking  a  pack  of  friendly  dogs  for  a 
country  walk.  Suddenly  he  was  aware  of  a  small  hand  upon 
his  sleeve,  a  small  hand  that  lay  there  like  a  white  butter- 
fly; and,  looking  down,  he  saw  a  poke-bonnet  garlanded 
with  yellow  rosebuds.  The  poke-bonnet  was  all  he  could 
see,  for  the  wearer  kept  her  gaze  steadily  on  the  road, 
while  with  little  feet  she  mimicked  his  long  strides.  The 
ineffable  lightness  of  the  arm  laid  on  his  own,  the  joyousN 
mockery  of  her  footsteps,  the  sense  of  an  exquisite  smile 
beneath  the  poke-bonnet,  and  the  airy  tremor  of  invitation 
that  fluttered  from  the  golden  shawl  of  Siamese  crepe 
about  her  shoulders  tempted  him  to  withdraw  from  the 
crowd  at  the  first  opportunity.  Soon  they  were  in  a  by- 
street, whence  the  clamor  of  Carnival  slowly  died  away, 
leaving  no  sound  upon  the  morning  air  but  their  footfalls 
and  the  faint  whisper  of  her  petticoats  where  she  tripped 
along  beside  him. 

Presently  the  poke-bonnet  was  raised;  Charles  Cunning- 
ham beheld  his  companion's  face,  a  perfect  oval,  set  with 
eyes  of  deepest  brown,  demurely  passionate,  eyes  that  in 
this  empty  street  were  all  for  him.  He  had  never  con- 
sidered himself  a  romantic  young  man;  when  this  en- 
counter had  faded  to  a  mere  flush  upon  the  dreamy  sky  of 
the  past,  he  was  always  a  little  scornful  of  his  first  remark, 
and  apt  to  wonder  how  the  deuce  he  ever  came  to  make  it. 

"By  Jove!  vous  savez,  vous  etes  tout  a  fait  comme  un 


oiseau! 


"Eh,  alors?"  she  murmured,  in  a  tone  that  was  neither 
defiance  nor  archness  nor  indifference  nor  invitation,  but 
something  that  was  compounded  of  all  four  and  expressed 
exactly  herself.  "Eh,  alors?" 


Prelude  xi 

"  Fotre  nid  est  loin  d'ici?"  he  asked. 

Nor  did  he  blush  for  the  guise  of  his  speech  at  the  time: 
afterward  it  struck  him  as  most  indecorously  poetic. 

' Fiens  done"  she  whispered. 

'  Comment  appelez-vous?" 

'Mai,  je  suis  Adele" 

1 A  dele  quoi?"  he  pressed. 

'Mais  Adele  alors,  tout  simplement  f<2." 

'C'est  un  peu — vous  savez — un  pen."  He  made  a  sweep 
with  his  unoccupied  arm  to  indicate  the  vagueness  of  it 
all. 

"I  love  you,"  she  trilled;  deep  down  in  her  ivory  throat 
emotion  caught  the  trill  and  made  of  it  a  melody  that  set 
his  heart  beating. 

"  V raiment?"  he  asked,  very  solemnly;  then  laying 
syllable  upon  syllable  in  a  kind  of  amazed  deliberation,  as  a 
child  builds  a  tower  of  bricks,  he  began  to  talk  to  her  in 
French. 

"  Maisy  comme  tu  paries  bien,"  she  told  him. 

"  Tu  m' inspires"  he  murmured,  hoarsely. 

Afterward,  when  he  looked  back  at  the  adventure,  he 
awarded  this  remark  the  prize  for  folly. 

The  adventure  did  not  have  a  long  life;  a  week  later 
Charles  Cunningham  was  called  back  to  England  by  the 
news  of  his  brother's  illness.  Before  Lent  was  out  he  had 
become  the  Earl  of  Saxby,  who  really  had  to  think  seriously 
of  marriage  and  treat  it  with  more  respect  than  the  Parisian 
gossip  over  which  Charles  Cunningham  had  idly  mused  at 
six  o'clock  of  Ash  Wednesday  morning  in  the  year  1847. 
As  for  Adele,  she  met  in  May  the  owner  of  a  traveling- 
booth,  a  widower  called  Bassompierre  with  a  small  son, 
who  had  enough  of  the  gipsy  to  attract  the  irresponsible 
Adele  and  enough  of  the  bourgeois  to  induce  her  to  marry 
him  for  the  sake  of  a  secure  and  solid  future.  She  need  not 
have  troubled  about  her  future,  the  deep-voiced  Adele; 
for  just  when  November  darkens  to  December  she  died  in 
giving  birth  to  Juliette.  The  gipsy  in  Albert  Bassompierre 
accepted  as  his  own  daughter  Juliette;  the  bourgeois  in 
him  erected  a  cross  in  the  cemetery  and  put  a  wreath  of 
immortelles  in  a  glass  case  to  lie  on  Adele's  tomb.  Then  he 
locked  away  the  few  pieces  of  jewelry  that  life  had  brought 


xii  Prelude 

her,  hung  another  daguerreotype  beside  the  one  of  his  first 
wife,  and  wrapped  Juliette  in  a  golden  shawl  of  Siamese 
crepe.  Lightly  the  two  daguerreotypes  swung  to  and  fro; 
and  lightly  rocked  the  cradle  where  the  baby  Juliette  lay 
sleeping,  while  the  caravan  jolted  southward  along  the 
straight  French  roads  where  the  poplars  seemed  to  be  com- 
menting to  one  another  in  the  wind. 

For  eighteen  years  the  caravan  jolted  along  these  roads, 
until  young  Edouard  Bassompierre  was  old  enough  to  play 
leading  man  throughout  the  repertory  and  thereby  most 
abruptly  plunge  his  predecessor  into  old  age.  At  the  same 
time  Juliette  was  allowed  to  act  the  soubrettes;  her  father 
was  too  much  afraid  of  the  leading  lady  to  play  any  tricks 
of  suddenly  imposed  senility  with  her.  It  was,  on  the 
whole,  a  jolly  life,  this  vagrancy  from  fair  to  fair  of  all  the 
towns  of  France.  It  was  jolly,  when  the  performance  was 
done,  to  gather  in  the  tent  behind  the  stage  and  eat  chipped 
potatoes  and  drink  red  wine  with  all  the  queer  people  whose 
voices  were  hoarse  with  crying  their  wares  all  the  day  long. 

Then  came,  one  springtime,  the  fair  at  Compiegne. 
Business  was  splendid,  for  the  Emperor  was  there  to  hunt 
the  wild  boar  in  the  forest.  Never  had  old  Albert  Bassom- 
pierre beaten  his  big  drum  so  confidently  at  the  entrance  of 
his  booth;  never  had  Edouard  captured  so  many  young 
women's  hearts;  both  of  them  were  too  much  occupied 
with  their  own  triumphs  to  notice  the  young  officer  who 
came  every  night  to  the  play.  The  Emperor  left  Com- 
piegne in  Apjil;  when  he  departed,  the  young  officer  de- 
parted also,  accompanied  by  Juliette. 

"Ah,  la  vache"  cried  old  Bassompierre;  "it's  perhaps  as 
well  her  mother  didn't  live,  for  she  might  have  done  the 
same." 

"You  should  have  let  her  play  the  lead,"  said  Edouard. 

"She  can  play  lead  in  real  life,"  replied  old  Bassompierre. 
"If  she  can,"  he  added,  fiercely. 

But  when  Juliette  wrote  to  him  from  Paris  and  told  him 
how  happy  she  was  with  her  lover,  the  gipsy  in  Bassom- 
pierre drove  out  the  bourgeois,  and  he  sent  his  daughter  her 
mother's  jewelry  and  the  golden  shawl;  but  he  kept  the 
daguerreotype,  for,  after  all,  Juliette  was  not  really  his 
daughter  and  Adele  had  really  been  his  wife. 


Prelude  xiii 

Three  years  passed.  Juliette  lived  in  a  little  house  at 
Belleville  with  two  baby  girls  called  Elene  and  Henriette. 
When  in  after  years  she  looked  back  to  this  time  it  seemed 
to  her  smothered  in  roses,  the  roses  of  an  operatic  scene. 
Everything,  indeed,  in  retrospect  was  like  that — the  arrival 
of  her  lover  in  his  gay  uniform,  the  embowered  kisses,  the 
lights  of  Paris  far  below,  the  suppers  on  the  veranda,  the 
warm  Sunday  mornings,  the  two  babies  asleep  on  the  lawn 
and  their  father  watching  them,  herself  before  a  glass  and 
her  lover's  face  seen  over  her  shoulder,  the  sudden  sharp 
embrace;  all  were  heavy  with  the  intolerable  sense  of  a 
curtain  that  must  fall.  Then  came  the  war;  there  was  a 
hurried  move  down  to  stuffy  apartments  in  Paris;  ready 
money  hastily  got  together  by  the  young  officer,  who  spoke 
confidently  of  the  large  sum  it  was,  since,  after  all,  the 
war  would  be  over  in  a  month  and  the  Prussians  have  had 
their  lesson;  and  at  last  a  breathless  kiss.  The  crowds 
surged  cheering  through  the  streets,  the  two  babies 
screamed  disapproval  of  their  new  surroundings,  and 

Juliette's  lover  was  killed  in  the  first  battle;  he  had  only 
time  to  scribble  a  few  trembling  lines: 

Mon  adoree,  je  t'ai  flanque  un  mauvais  coup.  Pardonnez- 
moi.  Mes  dernier es  pensees  sont  pour  toi.  Adieu.  Deux 
gros  becots  aux  bebes.  J'ai  parle  pour  toi  a  mon  pere. 
Cherche  argent — je  t'embrasse  follement  follem 

Yet  when  she  received  this  letter,  some  impulse  kept  her 
from  going  to  her  lover's  father.  She  could  not  bear  the 
possibility  of  being  made  to  realize  that  those  debonair 
years  of  love  were  regarded  by  him  as  an  intrigue  to  be 
solved  by  money.  If  Andre's  mother  had  been  alive,  she 
might  have  felt  differently;  now  she  would  not  trouble  a 
stricken  family  that  might  regard  her  tears  as  false;  she 
would  not  even  try  to  return  to  her  own  father.  No  doubt 
he  would  welcome  her;  but  pride,  all  the  strange  and 
terrible  pride  that  was  henceforth  to  haunt  Juliette's  soul, 
forbade  her. 

It  was  impossible,  however,  to  remain  in  Paris;  and 
without  any  reason  for  her  choice  she  took  her  babies  to 


xiv  Prelude 

Lyon  and  settled  down  in  rooms  overlooking  the  Rhone,  to 
await  the  end  of  the  war.  When  she  had  paid  the  cost  of 
the  journey  and  bought  herself  the  necessary  mourning, 
she  found  she  had  nearly  eleven  thousand  francs  left;  with 
care  this  could  surely  be  made  to  last  three  years  at  least; 
in  three  years  much  might  happen.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
much  happened  almost  at  once;  for  the  beauty  of  Juliette, 
a  lustrous  and  imperial  beauty,  caught  the  fancy  of 
Gustave  Lataille,  who  was  conductor  of  the  orchestra  at 
one  of  the  smaller  theaters  in  Lyon.  To  snare  his  fancy 
might  not  have  been  enough;  but  when  with  her  dowry  she 
captured  also  his  imagination,  he  married  her.  Juliette 
did  not  consider  it  wrong  to  marry  this  somber,  withered, 
and  uncommunicative  man  of  forty,  for  whom  she  had 
neither  passion  nor  affection.  He  struck  her  as  essentially 
like  most  of  the  husbands  she  had  observed  hitherto;  and 
she  esteemed  herself  lucky  not  to  have  met  such  a  one 
before  she  had  been  granted  the  boon  of  love.  She  must 
have  inherited  from  that  unknown  father  her  domestic 
qualities;  she  certainly  acquired  none  from  Adele.  From 
him,  too,  may  have  come  that  pride  which,  however  it 
may  have  found  its  chief  expression  in  ideals  of  bourgeois 
respectability,  was  nevertheless  a  fine  fiery  virtue  and 
supported  her  spirit  to  the  very  last. 

Juliette  and  Lataille  lived  together  without  anything  to 
color  a  drab  existence.  Notwithstanding  his  connection 
with  the  theater,  Lataille  had  no  bohemian  tastes;  once 
when  his  wife  suggested,  after  a  visit  from  her  father,  that 
there  seemed  no  reason  why  she  should  not  apply  for  an 
engagement  to  act,  he  unhesitatingly  refused  his  per- 
mission; when  she  attempted  to  argue,  he  reminded  her 
that  he  had  given  his  name  to  Elene  and  Henriette,  and  she 
was  silent.  Henceforth  she  devoted  herself  to  sewing,  and 
brought  into  the  world  four  girls  in  successive  years — 
Fran9oise,  Marie,  Marguerite,  and  Valentine.  The  last 
was  born  in  1875,  soon  after  the  Latailles  had  moved  to 
Lille,  where  Gustave  had  secured  the  post  of  conductor  at 
the  principal  theater.  Juliette  welcomed  the  change,  for  it 
gave  her  the  small  house  of  her  own  which  she  had  long 
wanted;  moreover,  nobody  in  Lille  knew  at  first  hand  of 
the  circumstances  in  which  Gustave  had  married  her,  so 


Prelude  xv 

that  Elene  and  Henrietta  could  go  to  school  without  being 
teased  about  their  mother's  early  lapse  from  the  standards 
of  conduct  which  she  fervently  desired  they  would  adopt. 

Unfortunately,  the  conductor  had  only  enjoyed  his 
advancement  a  year  when  he  was  struck  down  by  a  para- 
lytic stroke.  With  six  small  children  and  a  palsied  husband 
upon  her  hands,  Juliette  had  to  find  work.  Partly  from 
compassion  for  her  ill-fortune,  but  chiefly  because  by 
now  she  was  a  most  capable  seamstress,  the  manage- 
ment of  the  theater  engaged  her  as  wardrobe  mistress; 
and  for  five  years  Juliette  sustained  her  husband,  her 
children,  and  her  house.  They  were  years  that  would  have 
rubbed  the  bloom  from  most  women;  but  Juliette's  beauty 
seemed  to  grow  rather  than  diminish.  Her  personality 
became  proverbial  in  the  town  of  Lille,  and  though  as 
wardroom  mistress  she  was  denied  the  public  triumph  of 
the  footlights,  she  had  nevertheless  a  fame  of  her  own  that 
was  considered  unique  in  the  history  of  her  profession. 
Her  pride  flourished  on  the  deference  that  was  shown  her 
even  by  the  management;  between  her  beauty  and  her 
sharp  tongue  she  achieved  an  authority  that  reached  its 
height  in  the  way  she  brought  up  her  children.  Their 
snowy  pinafores,  their  trim  stockings,  their  manners,  and 
their  looks  were  the  admiration  of  the  quartier;  and  when 
in  the  year  1881  Gustave  Lataille  died,  the  neatness  of  their 
new  black  dresses  surprised  even  the  most  confirmed 
admirers  of  Madame  Lataille's  industry  and  taste.  At  no 
time  could  Juliette  have  seemed  so  beautiful  as  when,  after 
the  funeral,  she  raised  her  widow's  veil  and  showed  the 
attendant  sympathizers  a  countenance  unmarked  by  one 
tear  of  respectable  emotion.  She  was  far  too  proud  to 
weep  for  a  husband  whom  she  had  never  loved  and  whose 
death  was  a  relief;  when  the  neighbors  expressed  astonish- 
ment at  the  absence  of  any  outward  sorrow,  she  flung  out  a 
challenge  to  fate: 

"I  have  not  reached  the  age  of  thirty-four,  and  brought 
up  six  children,  and  never  once  been  late  with  so  much  as  a 
ribbon,  to  cry  for  any  man  now.  He'll  be  a  wonderful  man 
that  will  ever  make  me  cry.  Henriette,  don't  tug  at  your 
garter." 

And  as  she  stood  there,  with  great  brown  eyes  burning 


xvi  Prelude 

beneath  a  weight  of  lustrous  black  hair,  she  seemed  of 
marble  without  and  within. 

Nevertheless,  before  six  months  had  passed,  Madame 
Lataille  fell  impetuously  in  love  with  a  young  English  clerk 
of  twenty-one,  called  Henry  Snow;  what  is  more,  she 
married  him.  Nobody  in  Lille  was  able  to  offer  a  credible 
explanation  of  her  behavior.  People  were  willing  to  admit 
that  his  conduct  was  comprehensible,  notwithstanding  the 
fourteen  years  of  her  seniority;  and  it  says  much  for 
the  way  Juliette  had  impressed  her  personality  upon 
a  dull  provincial  world  that  Henry  Snow's  action  should 
have  been  so  immediately  understood.  Before  the  problem 
of  her  conduct,  however,  the  world  remained  in  perplexity. 
Financial  considerations  could  not  have  supplied  a  motive; 
from  all  accounts  the  Englishman  was  unlikely  to  help; 
indeed,  gossip  said  that  even  in  his  obscure  position  he  had 
already  had  opportunities  of  showing  that,  such  as  it  was, 
the  position  was  better  than  he  deserved  and  unlikely  to  be 
bettered  in  the  future.  Nor  could  his  good  looks  have 
attracted  her,  for  he  was  insignificant;  and  since  English- 
men in  the  experience  of  Lille  were,  whatever  their  faults, 
never  insignificant,  the  insignificance  of  Henry  Snow 
acquired  an  active  quality  which  contradicted  its  charac- 
terization and  made  him  seem  not  merely  unattractive,  but 
positively  displeasing.  Nor  could  she  have  required  some 
one  to  help  in  managing  her  six  children;  altogether  the 
affair  was  a  mystery,  which  gathered  volume  when  the 
world  began  to  realize  the  depth  of  the  feeling  that  Henry 
Snow  had  roused  in  Juliette.  All  the  world  loves  a  lover, 
but  only  when  it  is  allowed  to  obtrude  itself  upon  the  love. 
Juliette,  absorbed  by  her  emotion  and  the  eternal  jealousy 
of  the  woman  who  marries  a  man  much  younger  than  her- 
self, refused  to  admit  any  spectators  to  marvel  at  the 
development  of  the  mystery.  She  carried  on  her  work  as 
usual;  but  instead  of  maintaining  her  position  as  a  figure 
she  became  an  object  of  curiosity,  and  presently,  because 
that  curiosity  was  never  gratified,  an  object  of  suspicion. 
The  lover-loving  world  began  to  shake  its  head  and 
calumny  whispered  everywhere  its  commentary;  she  could 
never  have  been  afemme  propre;  this  marriage  must  have 
been  forced  upon  the  young  Englishman  as  the  price  of  a 


Prelude  xvii 

five-year-old  intrigue.  When  some  defender  of  Juliette 
pointed  out  that  the  clerk  had  only  been  in  Lille  three 
years,  that  his  name  had  never  been  connected  with  hers, 
and  that  in  any  case  he  was  only  twenty-one  now,  calumny 
retorted  with  a  long  line  of  Henry  Snows;  presently  the 
story  of  Juliette's  life  with  Andre  Duchesnil  was  dragged 
to  light,  and  by  an  infinite  multiplication  of  whispers  her 
career  from  earliest  youth  was  established  as  licentious, 
mercenary,  and  cruel. 

For  a  while  Juliette  was  so  much  wrapped  up  in  her  own 
joy  that  she  did  not  observe  the  steady  withdrawal  of 
popular  esteem.  Having  made  it  clear  to  everybody  that 
she  wished  to  be  left  alone  with  her  husband,  she  supposed 
she  had  been  successful  and  congratulated  herself  accord- 
ingly, until  one  day  a  persistent  friend,  proof  against 
Juliette's  icy  discouragement,  drove  into  her  that  the 
quartier  was  pitying  Henry  Snow,  that  things  were  being 
said  against  her,  and  that  the  only  way  to  put  a  stop  to 
unkind  gossip  was  to  move  about  among  the  neighbors  in 
more  friendly  fashion. 

Gradually  it  dawned  upon  Juliette  that  her  friend  was 
the  emissary  of  a  universally  accepted  calumny,  the  voice 
of  the  quartier,  the  first  to  brave  her,  and  only  now  rash 
enough  to  do  so  because  she  had  public  opinion  at  her  back. 
This  did  not  prevent  Juliette  from  showing  her  counselor 
the  door  to  the  street,  nor  from  slamming  it  so  abruptly 
that  a  meter  of  stuff  was  torn  from  her  skirt;  yet  when 
she  went  back  to  her  room  and  picked  up  her  needlework 
there  came  upon  her  with  a  shock  the  realization  of  what 
effect  all  this  might  have  on  Henry.  If  the  world  were 
pitying  him  now,  it  would  presently  be  laughing;  if  he 
were  laughed  at,  he  would  grow  to  hate  her.  Hitherto 
she  had  been  so  happy  in  her  love  that  she  had  never 
stopped  to  consider  anything  or  anybody.  She  remem- 
bered now  Henry's  amazement  when,  in  the  first  tumul- 
tuous wave  of  passion  dammed  for  so  many  years,  she  had 
refused  to  let  herself  be  swept  away;  she  recalled  his  faint 
hesitation  when  first  she  spoke  of  marriage  and  gave  him 
to  understand  that  without  marriage  she  would  not  be  his. 
Even  then  he  must  have  foreseen  the  possibility  of  ridicule, 
and  he  had  only  married  her  because  she  had  been  able  to 


xviii  Prelude 

seem  so  desirable.  And  she  was  still  desirable;  he  was  still 
enthralled;  he  was  still  vain  of  her  love;  yet  how  was  the 
flattery  of  one  woman  to  mitigate  for  a  man  the  contempt 
of  the  crowd?  Mercifully,  he  was  an  Englishman  in  a 
French  town,  therefore  it  would  take  longer  for  the 
popular  feeling  to  touch  him;  but  soon  or  late  it  would 
strike  home  to  his  vanity.  Something  must  be  devised  to 
transfix  him  with  the  dignity  of  marriage.  They  must 
have  a  child;  no  father  could  do  anything  but  resent  and 
despise  laughter  that  would  be  directed  against  his  father- 
hood. Juliette's  wish  was  granted  very  shortly  afterward; 
and  when  she  told  her  husband  of  their  expectation  she 
held  him  close  and  looked  deep  into  his  eyes  for  the 
triumph  she  sought.  Perhaps  the  fire  in  her  own  was 
reflected  in  his,  for  she  released  him  from  her  embrace 
with  a  sigh  of  content. 

Through  the  months  of  waiting  Juliette  longed  for  a 
boy.  It  seemed  to  her  somehow  essential  for  the  retention 
of  Henry's  love  that  she  should  give  him  a  boy;  she  could 
scarcely  bear  another  girl,  she  who  had  brought  into  the 
world  six  girls.  Much  of  Juliette's  pride  during  those 
months  was  softened  by  her  longing;  she  began  once  more 
to  frequent  the  company  of  her  neighbors  in  her  zest  for 
the  least  scrap  of  information  that  would  help  the  fulfil- 
ment of  it.  There  was  no  fantastic  concoction  she  would 
not  drink,  nor  any  omen  she  would  not  propitiate.  Half 
the  saints  in  the  calendar  were  introduced  to  her  by  ladies 
that  knew  them  and  vouched  for  the  interest  they  would 
take  in  her  pregnancy.  Juliette  never  confided  to  anybody 
her  reason  for  wanting  a  boy;  and  nobody  suspected  it, 
since  half  a  dozen  girls  were  enough  to  explain  any  woman's 
desire  for  a  change.  One  adviser  discovered  in  a  tattered 
volume  of  obstetrical  theory  that  when  the  woman  was 
older  than  the  man  the  odds  were  on  a  male  child.  Juliette's 
researches  to  gather  confirmation  of  this  remark  led  her 
into  discussions  about  unequal  marriages;  and  as  the  time 
of  her  confinement  drew  near  she  became  gentler  and 
almost  anxious  to  discuss  her  love  for  Henry  Snow,  so  much 
gentler  and  less  reserved  that  those  who  had  formerly 
whispered  loudest  and  most  falsely  to  one  another  now 
whispered  sympathetically  to  her. 


Prelude  xix 

On  the  day  before  Juliette's  confinement  her  husband 
came  in  from  work  very  irritable. 

"  Here,  when's  this  baby  going  to  be  born  ?  I'm  getting  a 
bit  annoyed.  The  men  at  the  office  are  betting  on  its  being 
a  boy.  It  makes  me  look  a  fool,  you  know,  that  sort  of 
thing." 

She  clutched  his  arm.  "Which  do  you  want,  Henri? 
Tell  me,  mon  amour,  mon  homme" 

"I  don't  care  which  it  is,  as  long  as  you're  quick  about  it 
and  this  betting  stops." 

That  night  she  was  delivered  of  a  girl,  and  because  it  was 
his  she  choked  down  the  wild  disappointment  and  loved 
Sylvia  the  best  of  all  her  seven  girls. 


SYLVIA 
SCARLETT 


Sylvia   Scarlett 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  first  complete  memory  of  her  father  that  Sylvia 
possessed  was  of  following  her  mother  out  into  the 
street  on  a  clear  moonlight  night  after  rain  and  of  seeing 
him  seated  in  a  puddle  outside  the  house,  singing  an  un- 
intelligible song  which  he  conducted  with  his  umbrella. 
She  remembered  her  mother's  calling  to  him  sharply,  and 
how  at  last  after  numerous  shakings  and  many  reproaches 
he  had  walked  into  the  house  on  all  fours,  carrying  the 
umbrella  in  his  mouth  like  a  dog.  She  remembered  that 
the  umbrella  was  somehow  wrong  at  the  end,  different 
from  any  other  umbrella  she  had  ever  seen,  so  that  when 
it  was  put  into  the  hall-stand  it  looked  like  a  fat  old  market 
woman  instead  of  the  trim  young  lady  it  should  have  re- 
sembled. She  remembered  how  she  had  called  her 
mother's  attention  to  the  loss  of  its  feet  and  how  her 
mother,  having  apparently  realized  for  the  first  time  her 
presence  at  the  scene,  had  promptly  hustled  her  up-stairs 
to  bed  with  so  much  roughness  that  she  had  cried. 

When  Sylvia  was  older  and  had  become  in  a  way  her 
mother's  confidante,  sitting  opposite  to  her  in  the  window 
to  sew  until  it  was  no  longer  possible  to  save  oil  for  the 
lamp,  she  ventured  to  recall  this  scene.  Her  mother  had 
laughed  at  the  remembrance  of  it  and  had  begun  to  hum 
the  song  her  father  had  sung: 

La  donna  e  mobile 
La  da-di  la-di-da. 

"Shall  I  ever  forget  him?"  Madame  Snow  had  cried. 
"It  was  the  day  your  sister  Elene  was  married,  and  he  had 


4  Sylvia    Scarlett 

been  down  to  the  railway-station  to  see  them  off  to 
Bruxelles." 

Sylvia  had  asked  what  the  words  of  the  song  meant, 
and  had  been  told  that  they  meant  women  were  always 
running  around. 

"Where?"  she  had  pressed. 

"Some  of  them  after  men  and  others  running  away  from 
them,"  her  mother  had  replied. 

"Shall  I  do  that  when  I'm  big?"  Sylvia  had  continued. 
"Which  shall  I  do?" 

But  it  had  been  time  to  fetch  the  lamp  and  the  question 
had  remained  unanswered. 

Sylvia  was  five  when  her  sister  Elene  was  married;  soon 
afterward  Henriette  married,  too.  She  remembered  that 
very  well,  because  Marie  went  to  join  Francoise  in  the 
other  bedroom,  and  with  only  Marguerite  and  Valentine 
left,  they  no  longer  slept  three  in  a  bed.  This  association 
had  often  been  very  uncomfortable  because  Marguerite 
would  eat  biscuits,  the  crumbs  of  which  used  to  scratch 
her  legs;  and  worse  than  the  crumbs  was  the  invariable 
quarrel  between  Marguerite  and  Valentine  that  always 
ended  in  their  pinching  each  other  across  Sylvia,  so  that 
she  often  got  pinched  by  mistake. 

For  several  years  Sylvia  suffered  from  being  the  young- 
est of  many  sisters,  and  her  mother's  favorite.  When  she 
went  to  school,  she  asked  other  girls  if  it  were  not  nicer 
to  have  brothers,  but  the  stories  she  heard  about  the 
behavior  of  boys  made  her  glad  there  were  only  girls  in 
her  house.  She  had  practical  experience  of  the  ways  of 
boys  when  at  the  age  of  eight  she  first  took  part  in  the 
annual  f eerie  at  the  Lille  theater.  On  her  first  appearance 
she  played  a  monster;  though  all  the  masks  were  very 
ugly,  she,  being  the  smallest  performer,  always  got  the 
ugliest,  and  with  the  progress  of  the  season  the  one  that 
was  most  knocked  about.  In  after  years  these  per- 
formances seemed  like  a  nightmare  of  hot  cardboard- 
scented  breath,  of  being  hustled  down  the  stone  stairs 
from  the  dressing-room,  of  noisy  rough  boys  shouting 
and  scrambling  for  the  best  masks,  of  her  legs  being 

E inched,  while  she  was  waiting  in  the  wings,  by  invisible 
oys,  and  once  of  somebody's  twisting  her  mask  right 


Sylvia    Scarlett  5 

round  as  they  made  the  famous  entrance  of  the  monsters, 
so  that,  being  able  to  see  nothing,  she  fell  down  and  made 
all  the  audience  laugh.  Such  were  boys! 

In  contrast  with  scenes  of  discomfort  and  misery  like 
these  were  the  hours  when  she  sat  sewing  with  her  mother 
in  the  quiet  house.  There  would  be  long  silences  only 
broken  by  the  sound  of  her  mother's  hand  searching  for 
new  thread  or  needle  in  the  work-basket,  of  clocks,  of  kettle 
on  the  hob,  or  of  distant  street  cries.  Then  her  mother 
would  suddenly  laugh  to  herself  and  begin  a  tale  so  inter- 
esting that  Sylvia's  own  needlework  would  lie  idly  on  her 
knee,  until  she  was  reproved  for  laziness,  and  silence  again 
inclosed  the  room.  Sometimes  the  sunset  would  glow 
through  the  window-panes  upon  her  mother's  work,  and 
Sylvia  would  stare  entranced  at  the  great  silken  roses  that 
slowly  opened  their  petals  for  those  swift  fingers.  Some- 
times it  would  be  a  piece  of  lace  that  lay  on  her  mother's 
lap,  lace  that  in  the  falling  dusk  became  light  and  mysteri- 
ous as  a  cloud.  Yet  even  these  tranquil  hours  had 
storms,  as  on  the  occasion  when  her  mother  had  been 
working  all  day  at  a  lace  cap  which  had  been  promised 
without  fail  to  somebody  at  the  theater  who  required  it 
that  night.  At  six  o'clock  she  had  risen  with  a  sigh  and 
given  the  cap  to  Sylvia  to  hold  while  she  put  on  her 
things  to  take  it  down  to  the  theater.  Sylvia  had  stood 
by  the  fire,  dreaming  over  the  beauty  of  the  lace;  and 
then  without  any  warning  the  cap  had  fallen  into  the 
fire  and  in  a  moment  was  ashes.  Sylvia  wished  she 
could  have  followed  the  cap  when  she  saw  her  mother's 
face  of  despair  on  realizing  what  had  happened.  It  was 
then  that  for  the  first  time  she  learned  how  much  depended 
upon  her  mother's  work;  for  during  all  that  week,  when- 
ever she  was  sent  out  on  an  errand,  she  was  told  to  buy 
only  the  half  of  everything,  half  the  usual  buttei,  half  the 
usual  sugar,  and  what  was  stranger  still  to  go  to  shops 
outside  the  quartier  at  which  Madame  Snow  never  dealt. 
When  she  inquired  the  reason  of  this  her  mother  asked 
her  if  she  wanted  all  the  quartier  to  know  that  they  were 
poor  and  could  only  afford  to  buy  half  the  usual  amount 
that  week. 

Sylvia,  when  the  first  shame  of  her  carelessness  had 


6  Sylvia    Scarlett 

died  away,  rather  enjoyed  these  excursions  to  streets  more 
remote,  where  amusing  adventures  were  always  possible. 
One  Saturday  afternoon  in  April  Sylvia  set  out  with  a 
more  than  usually  keen  sense  of  the  discoveries  and  adven- 
tures that  might  befall  her.  The  first  discovery  was  a  boy 
on  a  step-ladder,  polishing  a  shop  window;  and  the  second 
discovery  was  that  she  could  stand  on  the  curbstone  and 
never  once  fail  to  spit  home  upon  the  newly  polished  glass. 
She  did  this  about  a  dozen  times,  watching  the  saliva 
dribble  down  the  pane  and  speculating  with  herself  which 
driblet  would  make  the  longest  journey.  Regretfully  she 
saw  that  the  boy  was  preparing  to  descend  and  admire  his 
handiwork,  because  two  driblets  were  still  progressing 
slowly  downward,  one  of  which  had  been  her  original  fancy 
for  the  prize  of  endurance.  As  she  turned  to  flee,  she  saw 
on  the  pavement  at  her  feet  a  golden  ten-franc  piece;  she 
picked  it  up  and  grasping  it  tightly  in  her  hot  little  hand 
ran  off",  not  forgetting,  even  in  the  excitement  of  her 
sudden  wealth,  to  turn  round  at  a  safe  distance  and  put  out 
her  tongue  at  the  boy  to  mark  her  contempt  for  him,  for 
the  rest  of  his  class,  and  for  all  their  handiwork,  especially 
that  newly  polished  window-pane.  Then  she  examined  the 
gold  piece  and  marveled  at  it,  thinking  how  it  obliterated 
the  memory  of  that  mother-o'-pearl  button  which  only  the 
other  day  she  had  found  on  the  dust-heap  and  lost  a  few 
hours  afterward. 

It  was  a  wonderful  afternoon,  an  afternoon  of  unbridled 
acquisition,  which  began  with  six  very  rich  cakes  and  ended 
with  a  case  of  needles  for  her  mother  that  used  up  her  last 
sou.  Coming  out  of  the  needle-shop,  her  arms  full  of 
packages,  she  met  a  regiment  of  soldiers  marching  and 
singing.  The  soldiers  expressed  her  triumphant  mood,  and 
Sylvia  marched  with  them,  joining  in  their  songs.  She  had 
a  few  cakes  left  and,  being  grateful  to  the  soldiers,  she 
handed  them  round  among  them,  which  earned  her  much 
applause  from  passers-by.  When  the  regiment  had  arrived 
at  the  barracks  and  her  particular  friends  had  all  kissed  her 
farewell  and  there  were  no  more  bystanders  to  smile  their 
approbation,  Sylvia  thought  it  would  be  wise  to  do  the 
shopping  for  her  mother.  She  had  marched  farther  than 
she  realized  with  the  soldiers;  it  was  nearly  dusk  when  she 


Sylvia    Scarlett  7 

reached  the  grocer's  where  she  was  to  buy  the  small  quan- 
tity of  sugar  that  was  all  that  could  be  afforded  this  week. 
She  made  her  purchase,  and  put  her  hand  into  the  pocket  of 
her  pinafore  for  the  money:  the  pocket  was  empty.  Every- 
thing in  the  grocer's  shop  seemed  to  be  tumbling  about  her 
in  a  great  and  universal  catastrophe.  She  searched  fever- 
ishly again;  there  was  a  small  hole;  of  course  her  mother 
had  given  her  a  ten-franc  piece,  telling  her  to  be  very  care- 
ful indeed  of  the  change,  which  was  wanted  badly  for  the 
rent.  She  could  not  explain  to  the  man  what  had  hap- 
pened and,  leaving  the  packet  on  the  counter,  she  rushed 
from  the  shop  into  the  cruel  twilight,  choked  by  tearless 
sobs  and  tremors  of  apprehension.  At  first  she  thought  of 
trying  to  find  the  shops  where  she  had  made  her  own  pur- 
chases that  she  might  recover  such  of  the  money  as  had 
not  been  eaten;  but  her  nervous  fears  refused  to  let  her 
mind  work  properly,  and  everything  that  had  happened 
on  this  luckless  afternoon  seemed  to  have  happened  in  a 
dream.  It  was  already  dark;  all  she  could  do  was  to  run 
home,  clutching  the  miserable  toys  to  her  heart  and  won- 
dering if  the  needle-case  could  possibly  allay  a  little,  a  very 
little,  of  her  mother's  anger. 

Madame  Snow  began  as  soon  as  Sylvia  entered  the  house 
by  demanding  what  she  had  been  doing  to  be  so  late  in 
coming  home.  Sylvia  stammered  and  was  silent;  stam- 
mered again  and  let  fall  all  her  parcels;  then  she  burst  into 
a  flood  of  tears  that  voiced  a  despair  more  profound  than 
she  had  ever  known.  When  her  mother  at  last  extracted 
from  Sylvia  what  had  happened  she,  too,  wept;  and  the 
pair  of  them  sat  filling  the  room  with  their  sobs,  until 
Henry  Snow  appeared  upon  the  scene  and  asked  if  they 
had  both  gone  mad. 

His  wife  and  daughter  sobbed  a  violent  negative.  Henry 
stared  at  the  floor  littered  with  Sylvia's  numerous  pur- 
chases, but  found  there  no  answer  to  the  riddle.  He 
moved  across  to  Juliette  and  shook  her,  urging  her  not  to 
become  hysterical. 

"The  last  bit  of  money  I  had  and  the  rent  due  on 
Monday!"  she  wailed. 

"Don't  you  worry  about  money,"  said  Henry,  impor- 
tantly. "I've  had  a  bit  of  luck  at  cards,"  and  he  offered  his 


8  Sylvia    Scarlett 

wife  a  note.  Moreover,  when  he  heard  the  reason  for  all 
this  commotion  of  grief,  he  laughed,  said  it  might  have 
happened  to  any  one,  congratulated  Sylvia  upon  her  choice 
of  goods,  declared  it  was  time  she  began  to  study  English 
seriously  and  vowed  that  he  was  the  one  to  be  her  teacher, 
yes,  by  gad,  he  was,  and  that  to-morrow  morning  being 
Sunday  they  would  make  a  start.  Then  he  began  to  fondle 
his  wife,  which  embarrassed  Sylvia,  but  nevertheless 
because  these  caresses  so  plainly  delighted  her  mother, 
they  consoled  her  for  the  disaster.  So  she  withdrew  to  a 
darker  corner  of  the  room  and  played  with  the  doll  she  had 
bought,  listening  to  the  conversation  between  her  parents. 

"Do  you  love  me,  Henri?" 

"Of  course  I  love  you." 

"You  know  that  I  would  sacrifice  the  world  for  you? 
I've  given  you  everything.  If  you  love  me  still,  then  you 
must  love  me  for  myself — myself  alone,  mon  homme" 

"Of  course  I  do." 

"But  I'm  growing  old,"  protested  Juliette.  "There  are 
others  younger  than  I.  Ah,  Henri,  amour  de  ma  vie,  I'm 
jealous  even  of  the  girls.  I  want  them  all  out  of  the  house. 
I  hate  them  now,  except  ours — ours,  ma  poupee." 

Sylvia  regarding  her  own  doll  could  not  help  feeling  that 
this  was  a  most  inappropriate  name  for  her  father;  she 
wondered  why  her  mother  called  him  that  and  decided 
finally  that  it  must  be  because  he  was  shorter  than  she  was. 
The  evening  begun  so  disastrously  ended  most  cheerfully; 
when  Francoise  and  Marie  arrived  back  at  midnight,  they 
escaped  even  the  mildest  rebuke  from  their  mother. 

Sylvia's  father  kept  his  promise  about  teaching  her 
English,  and  she  was  granted  the  great  pleasure  of  being 
admitted  to  his  room  every  evening  when  he  returned  from 
work.  This  room  until  now  had  always  been  a  Bluebeard's 
chamber,  not  merely  for  Sylvia,  but  for  every  one  else  in 
the  house.  To  be  sure  Sylvia  had  sometimes,  when  supper 
was  growing  cold,  peeped  in  to  warn  her  father  of  fleeting 
time,  but  it  had  always  been  impressed  upon  her  that  in  no 
circumstances  was  she  to  enter  the  room;  though  she  had 
never  seen  in  these  quick  glimpses  anything  more  exciting 
than  her  father  sitting  in  his  shirt-sleeves  and  reading  in  a 
tumbledown  arm-chair,  there  had  always  been  the  sense  of 


Sylvia    Scarlett  9 

a  secret.  Now  that  she  was  made  free  of  this  apartment 
she  perceived  nothing  behind  the  door  but  a  bookcase 
fairly  full  of  books,  nothing  indeed  anywhere  that  seemed 
to  merit  concealment,  unless  it  were  some  pictures  of  un- 
dressed ladies  looking  at  themselves  in  a  glass.  Once  she 
had  an  opportunity  of  opening  one  of  the  books  and  she 
was  astonished,  when  her  father  came  in  and  caught  her, 
that  he  said  nothing,  for  she  felt  sure  that  her  mother 
wouli  have  been  very  angry  if  she  had  seen  her  reading 
such  a  book.  She  had  blushed  when  her  father  found  her; 
when  he  had  said  nothing  and  even  laughed  in  a  queer  un- 
pleasant sort  of  a  way,  she  had  blushed  still  more  deeply. 
Yet  whenever  she  had  a  chance  she  read  these  books  after- 
ward and  henceforth  regarded  her  father  with  an  affec- 
tionate contempt  which  was  often  expressed  too  frankly  to 
please  her  mother,  who  finally  became  so  much  irritated  by 
it  that  she  sent  her  away  to  Bruxelles  to  stay  with  Elene, 
her  eldest  married  sister.  Sylvia  did  not  enjoy  this  visit 
very  much,  because  her  brother-in-law  was  always  making 
remarks  about  her  personal  appearance,  comparing  it  most 
unfavorably  with  his  wife's.  It  seemed  that  Elene  had 
recently  won  a  prize  for  beauty  at  the  Exposition,  and 
though  Sylvia  would  have  been  suitably  proud  of  this 
family  achievement  in  ordinary  circumstances,  this  con- 
tinual harping  upon  it  to  her  own  disadvantage  made  her 
wish  that  Elene  had  been  ignobly  defeated. 

"Strange  her  face  should  be  so  round  and  yours  such  a 
perfect  oval,"  Elene' s  husband  would  say.  "And  her  lips 
are  so  thin  and  her  eyes  so  much  lighter  than  yours.  She's 
short,  too,  for  her  age.  I  don't  think  she'll  ever  be  as  tall  as 
you.  But  of  course  every  one  can't  be  beautiful." 

"Of  course  they  can't,"  Sylvia  snapped.  "If  they 
could,  Elene  might  not  have  won  the  prize  so  easily." 

"She's  not  a  great  beauty,  but  she  has  a  tongue.  And 
she's  smart,"  her  brother-in-law  concluded. 

Sylvia  used  to  wonder  why  every  one  alluded  to  her 
tongue.  Her  mother  had  told  her  just  before  she  was  sent 
to  Bruxelles  that  the  priest  had  put  too  much  salt  on  it 
when  she  was  christened.  She  resolved  to  be  silent  in 
future;  but  this  resolve  reacted  upon  her  nerves  to  such  an 
extent  that  she  wrote  home  to  Lille  and  begged  to  be 


io  Sylvia    Scarlett 

allowed  to  come  back.  There  had  been  diplomacy  in  the 
way  she  had  written  to  her  father  in  English  rather  than  to 
her  mother  in  French.  Such  a  step  led  her  mother  to  sup- 
pose that  she  repented  of  criticizing  her  father;  it  also 
prevented  her  sister  Elene  from  understanding  the  letter 
and  perhaps  writing  home  to  suggest  keeping  her  in 
Bruxelles.  Sylvia  was  overjoyed  at  receiving  an  early  reply 
from  her  mother  bidding  her  come  home,  and  sending 
stamps  for  her  to  buy  a  picture  post-card  album,  which 
would  be  much  cheaper  in  Belgium;  she  was  enjoined  to 
buy  one  picture  post-card  and  put  it  in  the  album,  so  that 
the  customs  officials  should  not  charge  duty. 

Sylvia  had  heard  a  great  deal  of  smuggling  and  was 
thrilled  by  the  illegal  transaction,  which  seemed  to  her  the 
most  exciting  enterprise  of  her  life.  She  said  good-by  to 
Bruxelles  without  regret;  clasping  her  album  close,  she 
waited  anxiously  for  the  train  to  start,  thinking  to  herself 
that  Elene  only  kept  on  putting  her  head  into  the  carriage 
window  to  make  stupid  remarks  because  the  compart- 
ment was  crowded  and  she  hoped  some  one  would  recognize 
her  as  the  winner  of  the  beauty  competition  at  the  Brux- 
elles Exposition. 

At  last  the  train  started,  and  Sylvia  settled  down  to  the 
prospect  of  crossing  the  frontier  with  contraband.  She 
looked  at  all  the  people  in  the  carriage,  thinking  to  herself 
what  dangers  she  would  presently  encounter.  It  was 
almost  impossible  not  to  tell  them,  as  they  sat  there  in  the 
stuffy  compartment  scattering  crumbs  everywhere  with 
their  lunches.  Soon  a  pleasant  woman  in  black  engaged 
Sylvia  in  conversation  by  offering  her  an  orange  from  a 
string-bag.  It  was  very  difficult  to  eat  the  orange  and  keep 
a  tight  hold  of  the  album;  in  the  end  it  fell  on  the  floor, 
whereupon  a  fat  old  gentleman  sitting  opposite  stooped 
over  and  picked  it  up  for  her.  He  had  grunted  so  in  mak- 
ing the  effort  that  Sylvia  felt  she  must  reward  him  with 
more  than  thanks;  she  decided  to  divulge  her  secret  and 
explain  to  him  and  the  pleasant  woman  with  the  string-bag 
the  history  of  the  album.  Sylvia  was  glad  when  all  her 
other  fellow-travelers  paid  attention  to  the  tale,  and  she 
could  point  out  that  an  album  like  this  cost  two  francs 
fifty  centimes  in  Lille,  whereas  in  Bruxelles  she  had  been 


Sylvia    Scarlett  n 

able  to  buy  it  for  two  francs.  Then,  because  everybody 
smiled  so  encouragingly,  she  unwrapped  the  album  and 
showed  the  single  picture  post-card,  discoursing  upon  the 
ruse.  Everybody  congratulated  her,  and  everybody  told 
one  another  anecdotes  about  smuggling,  until  finally  a 
tired  and  anxious-looking  woman  informed  the  company 
that  she  was  at  that  very  moment  smuggling  lace  to  the 
value  of  more  than  two  thousand  francs.  Everybody 
warned  her  to  be  very  careful,  so  strict  were  the  customs 
officials;  but  the  anxious-looking  woman  explained  that  it 
was  wrapped  round  her  and  that  in  any  case  she  must 
take  the  risk,  so  much  depended  upon  her  ability  to  sell 
this  lace  at  a  handsome  profit  in  France. 

When  the  frontier  was  reached  Sylvia  alighted  with  the 
rest  of  the  travelers  to  pass  through  the  customs,  and  with 
quickening  heart  she  presented  herself  at  the  barrier,  her 
album  clutched  tightly  to  her  side.  No,  she  had  nothing 
to  declare,  and  with  a  sigh  of  relief  at  escape  from  danger 
she  saw  her  little  valise  safely  chalked.  When  she  passed 
through  to  take  her  seat  in  the  train  again,  she  saw  a  man 
whom  she  recognized  as  a  traveler  from  her  own  compart- 
ment that  had  told  several  anecdotes  about  contraband. 
He  was  talking  earnestly  now  to  one  of  the  officials  at  the 
barrier  and  pointing  out  the  anxious  woman,  who  was  still 
waiting  to  pass  through. 

"I  tell  you  she  had  two  thousand  francs'  worth  of  lace 
wrapped  round  her.  She  admitted  it  in  the  train." 

Sylvia  felt  her  legs  give  way  beneath  her  when  she  heard 
this  piece  of  treachery.  She  longed  to  cry  out  to  the 
woman  with  the  lace  that  she  had  been  betrayed,  but 
already  she  had  turned  deathly  pale  at  the  approach  of  the 
officials.  They  were  beckoning  her  to  follow  them  to  a 
kind  of  cabin,  and  she  was  moving  toward  it  hopelessly. 
It  was  dreadful  to  see  a  poor  woman  so  treated,  and  Sylvia 
looked  round  to  find  the  man  who  had  been  the  cause  of  it, 
but  he  had  vanished. 

Half  an  hour  afterward  the  woman  of  the  lace  wearily 
climbed  into  the  compartment  and  took  her  seat  with  the 
rest;  her  eyes  were  red  and  she  was  still  weeping  bitterly. 
The  others  asked  what  had  happened. 

"They  found  it  on  me,"  she  moaned.    "And  now  what 


12  Sylvia    Scarlett 

shall  I  do?  It  was  all  we  had  in  the  world  to  pay  the  mort- 
gage on  our  house.  My  poor  husband  is  ill,  very  ill,  and  it 
was  the  only  way  to  save  him.  I  should  have  sold  that  lace 
for  four  thousand  francs,  and  now  they  have  confiscated 
it  and  we  shall  be  fined  one  thousand  francs.  We  haven't 
any  money.  It  was  everything — everything.  We  shall 
lose  our  house  and  our  furniture,  and  my  husband  will  die. 
Oh,  mon  Dieu!  mon  Dieu!" 

She  rocked  backward  and  forward  in  her  grief;  nothing 
that  any  one  could  say  comforted  her.  Sylvia  told  how  she 
had  been  betrayed;  everybody  execrated  the  spy  and  said 
how  careful  one  should  be  to  whom  one  spoke  when 
traveling;  but  that  did  not  help  the  poor  woman,  who 
sobbed  more  and  more  despairingly. 

At  last  the  train  came  to  its  first  stop  in  France,  and  the 
man  that  had  denounced  the  poor  woman  suddenly  jumped 
in,  as  they  were  starting  again,  and  took  his  old  seat.  The 
fat  gentleman  next  to  Sylvia  swelled  with  indignation; 
his  veins  stood  out,  and  he  shouted  angrily  at  the  man  what 
a  rascal  he  was.  Everybody  in  thecarriage  joined  in  abusing 
him;  and  the  poor  woman  herself  wailed  out  her  sad  story 
and  reproached  him  for  the  ruin  he  had  brought  upon  her. 
As  for  Sylvia,  she  could  not  contain  herself,  but  jumped  up 
and  with  all  her  might  kicked  him  on  the  shins,  an  action 
which  made  the  fat  gentleman  shout:  "Bravo!  Vas-y! 
Encore,  la  gosse!  Bravo!  Bis!  Bis!" 

When  the  noise  had  subsided  the  man  began  to  speak. 

"I  regret  infinitely,  madame,  the  inconvenience  to 
which  I  was  unfortunately  compelled  to  put  you,  but  the 
fact  is  that  I  myself  was  carrying  diamonds  upon  me  to  the 
value  of  more  than  two  hundred  thousand  francs." 

He  suddenly  took  out  a  wallet  from  his  pocket  and 
emptied  the  stones  into  his  hand,  where  they  lay  sparkling 
in  the  dusty  sunshine  of  the  compartment.  Everybody 
was  silent  with  surprise  for  a  moment;  when  they  began  to 
abuse  him  again,  he  trickled  the  diamonds  back  into  the 
wallet  and  begged  for  attention. 

"How  much  have  you  lost,  madame?"  he  inquired,  very 
politely. 

The  woman  of  the  lace  poured  forth  her  woes  for  the 
twentieth  time. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  13 

"  Permit  me  to  offer  you  these  notes  to  the  value  of  six 
thousand  francs,"  he  said.  "  I  hope  the  extra  thousand  will 
recompense  you  for  the  temporary  inconvenience  to  which 
I  was  unfortunately  compelled  to  put  you.  Pray  accept  my 
deepest  apologies,  but  at  the  same  time  let  me  suggest 
greater  discretion  in  future.  Yet  we  are  all  human,  are  we 
not,  monsieur?"  he  added,  turning  to  the  fat  gentleman 
next  to  Sylvia.  "Will  you  be  very  much  surprised  when  I 
tell  you  that  I  have  never  traveled  from  Amsterdam  but 
I  have  found  some  indiscreet  fellow-traveler  that  has  been 
of  permanent  service  to  me  at  temporary  inconvenience  to 
himself.  This  time  I  thought  I  was  going  to  be  unlucky,  for 
this  was  the  last  compartment  left;  fortunately  that  young 
lady  set  a  bad  example." 

He  smiled  at  Sylvia. 

This  story,  when  she  told  it  at  home,  seemed  to  make  a 
great  impression  upon  her  father,  who  maintained  that  the 
stranger  was  a  fool  ever  to  return  to  the  carriage. 

"Some  people  seem  to  think  money's  made  to  throw 
into  the  gutter,"  he  grumbled. 

Sylvia  was  sorry  about  his  point  of  view,  but  when  she 
argued  with  him  he  told  her  to  shut  up;  later  on  that 
same  evening  he  had  a  dispute  with  his  wife  about  going 
out. 

"I  want  to  win  it  back,"  he  protested.  "I've  had  a  run 
of  bad  luck  lately.  I  feel  to-night  it's  going  to  change.  Did 
I  tell  you  I  saw  the  new  moon  over  my  right  shoulder,  as  I 
came  in?" 

"So  did  I,"  said  his  wife.  "But  I  don't  rush  off  and 
gamble  away  other  people's  money  for  the  sake  of  the 
moon." 

"You  saw  it,  too,  did  you?"  said  Henry,  eagerly.  "Well, 
there  you  are!" 

The  funny  thing  was  that  Henry  was  right;  he  did  have 
a  run  of  good  luck,  and  the  house  became  more  cheerful 
again.  Sylvia  went  on  with  her  English  studies;  but 
nowadays  even  during  lessons  her  father  never  stopped 
playing  cards.  She  asked  him  once  if  he  were  telling  his 
fortune,  and  he  replied  that  he  was  trying  to  make  it. 
"See  if  you  can  pick  out  the  queen,"  he  would  say.  And 
Sylvia  never  could,  which  made  her  father  chuckle  to  him- 


14  Sylvia    Scarlett 

self  with  pleasure.  About  this  time,  too,  he  developed  a 
habit  of  playing  with  a  ten-centime  piece.  Whenever  he 
or  any  one  else  was  talking,  he  used  to  fidget  with  this  coin; 
in  the  middle  of  something  important  or  interesting  it 
used  to  jingle  down  on  the  floor,  and  everybody  had  to  go 
on  hands  and  knees  to  search  for  it.  This  habit  became 
so  much  the  intrinsic  Henry  Snow  that  Sylvia  could  never 
think  of  him  without  that  ten-centime  piece  sliding  over  his 
long  mobile  hands,  in  and  out  of  his  prehensile  fingers: 
and  though  with  the  progress  of  time  he  ceased  to  drop 
the  coin  very  often,  the  restless  motion  always  irritated 
her.  When  Sylvia  was  eleven  her  uncle  Edouard  came  to 
Lille  with  his  caravan  and  brought  the  news  of  the  death 
of  her  grandfather.  She  was  not  much  impressed  by  this, 
but  the  caravan  and  the  booth  delighted  her;  and  when 
her  uncle  asked  if  he  might  not  take  her  away  with  him  on 
a  long  tour  through  the  south  of  France,  she  begged  to  be 
allowed  to  go.  Her  mother  had  so  often  held  her  spell- 
bound by  tales  of  her  own  wandering  life  that,  when  she 
seemed  inclined  to  withhold  her  permission,  Sylvia  blamed 
her  as  the  real  origin  of  this  longing  to  taste  the  joys  of 
vagrancy,  pleading  so  earnestly  that  at  last  her  mother 
gave  way  and  let  her  go. 

Uncle  Edouard  and  Aunt  Elise,  who  sat  in  the  box  out- 
side the  booth  and  took  the  money,  were  both  very  kind  to 
Sylvia,  and  since  they  had  no  children  of  their  own,  she  was 
much  spoilt.  Indeed,  there  was  not  a  dull  moment 
throughout  the  tour;  for  even  when  she  went  to  bed,  which 
was  always  delightfully  late,  bed  was  really  a  pleasure  in  a 
caravan. 

In  old  Albert  Bassompierre's  days  the  players  had  con- 
fined themselves  to  the  legitimate  drama;  Edouard  had 
found  it  more  profitable  to  tour  a  variety  show  inter- 
spersed with  one-act  farces  and  melodrama.  Sylvia's 
favorites  in  the  company  were  Madame  Perron,  the  wife 
of  the  chanteur  grivois,  and  Blanche,  a  tall,  fair,  noisy  girl 
who  called  herself  a  diseuse,  but  who  usually  sang  indecent 
ballads  in  a  powerful  contralto.  Madame  Perron  was 
Sylvia's  first  attraction,  because  she  had  a  large  collection 
of  dolls  with  which  she  really  enjoyed  playing.  She  was  a 
femme  tres-propre,  and  never  went  farther  with  any  of  her 


Sylvia    Scarlett  15 

admirers  in  the  audience  than  to  exact  from  him  the  gift 
of  a  doll. 

"  Voild  ses  amours  manques"  her  husband  used  to  say 
with  a  laugh. 

In  the  end  Sylvia  found  her  rather  dull,  and  preferred 
to  go  tearing  about  the  country  with  Blanche,  who,  though 
she  had  been  a  scullery-maid  in  a  Boulogne  hotel  only  a 
year  ago,  had  managed  during  her  short  career  on  the  stage 
to  collect  more  lovers  than  Madame  Perron  had  collected 
dolls.  She  had  a  passion  for  driving.  Sylvia  could  always 
be  sure  that  on  the  morning  after  their  opening  per- 
formance in  any  town  a  wagonette  or  dog-cart  would  be 
waiting  to  take  them  to  some  neighboring  village,  where 
a  jolly  party  would  make  a  tremendous  noise,  scandalize 
the  inhabitants,  and  depart,  leaving  a  legacy  of  unpopu- 
larity in  the  district  for  whichever  of  Blanche's  lovers  had 
paid  for  the  entertainment  with  his  purse  and  his  reputa- 
tion. Once  they  arrived  at  a  village  where  a  charity 
bazaar  was  being  held  under  the  direction  of  the  cure. 
Blanche  was  presented  to  him  as  a  distinguished  actress 
from  Paris  who  was  seeking  peace  and  recreation  in  the 
depths  of  the  country.  The  cure  asked  if  it  would  be  pre- 
suming too  far  on  her  good  nature  to  give  them  a  taste  of 
her  art  in  the  cause  of  holy  charity,  a  speech  perhaps  from 
Corneill  or  Racine.  Blanche  assented  immediately  and 
recited  a  piece  stuffed  so  full  of  spicy  argot  that  the  rustic 
gentility  understood  very  little  of  it,  though  enough  to 
make  them  blush — all  except  the  priest,  that  is,  who  was 
very  deaf  and  asked  Blanche,  when  she  had  finished,  if  it 
were  not  a  speech  from  Phedre  she  had  declaimed,  thanking 
her  very  earnestly  for  the  pleasure  she  had  given  his  simple 
parish  folk,  a  pleasure,  alas,  which  he  regretted  he  had  not 
been  able  to  enjoy  as  much  as  he  should  have  enjoyed  it 
before  he  became  deaf. 

On  another  occasion  they  drove  to  see  the  ruins  of  an 
ancient  castle  in  Brittany,  and  afterward  went  down  into 
the  village  to  drink  wine  in  the  garden  of  the  inn,  where  an 
English  family  was  sitting  at  afternoon  tea.  Sylvia  stared 
curiously  at  the  two  little  girls  who  obeyed  their  governess 
so  promptly  and  ate  their  cakes  so  mincingly.  They  were 
the  first  English  girls  she  had  ever  seen,  and  she  would  very 

2 


16  Sylvia    Scarlett 

much  have  liked  to  tell  them  that  her  father  was  English, 
for  they  seemed  to  want  cheering  up,  so  solemn  were  their 
light-blue  eyes  and  so  high  their  boots.  Sylvia  whispered 
to  Blanche  that  they  were  English,  who  replied  that  so 
much  was  very  obvious,  and  urged  Sylvia  to  address  them 
in  their  native  tongue;  it  would  give  them  much  pleasure, 
she  thought.  Sylvia,  however,  was  too  shy,  so  Blanche  in 
her  loudest  voice  suddenly  shouted: 

"Oh  yes!  T'ank  you!  I  love  you!  All  right!  You 
sleep  with  me?  Goddambleudi!" 

The  English  family  looked  very  much  shocked,  but  the 
governess  came  to  their  rescue  by  asking  in  a  thin  throaty 
voice  for  the  "attition,"  and  presently  they  all  walked  out 
of  the  garden.  Blanche  judged  the  English  to  be  a  dull 
race,  and,  mounting  on  a  table,  began  a  rowdy  dance.  It 
happened  that,  just  when  the  table  cracked,  the  English 
governess  came  back  for  an  umbrella  she  had  left  behind, 
and  that  Blanche,  leaping  wildly  to  save  herself  from 
falling,  leaped  on  the  governess  and  brought  her  to  the 
ground  in  a  general  ruin  of  chairs  and  tables.  Blanche 
picked  up  the  victim  and  said  that  it  was  all  very  rigolo, 
which  left  miss  as  wise  as  she  was  before,  her  French  not 
extending  beyond  the  tea-table  and  the  chaster  portions 
of  a  bedroom.  Blanche  told  Sylvia  to  explain  to  miss 
that  she  had  displayed  nothing  more  in  her  fall  than  had 
given  much  pleasure  to  all  the  world.  Sylvia,  who  really 
felt  the  poor  governess  required  such  practical  consolation, 
translated  accordingly,  whereat  miss  became  very  red  and, 
snatching  her  umbrella,  walked  away  muttering,  "Im- 
pertinent little  gipsy."  When  Blanche  was  told  the  sub- 
stance of  her  last  remark,  she  exclaimed,  indignantly: 

"Elles  sont  des  vrais  types,  vous  savez,  ces  gonzesses. 
Mince,  alors!  Pourquoi  s'emballer  comme  fa?  Elle  portait 
un  pantalon  ferme!  Quelle  race  infecte,  ces  Anglais!  Moi, 
je  ne  peux  pas  les  suffrir." 

Sylvia,  listening  to  Blanche's  tirade,  wondered  if  all  the 
English  were  like  that.  She  thought  of  her  father's  books, 
and  decided  that  life  in  France  must  have  changed  him 
somehow.  Then  she  called  to  mind  with  a  shiver  the 
solemn  light-blue  eyes  of  the  little  girls.  England  must  be 
a  cold  sort  of  a  place  where  nobody  ever  laughed;  perhaps 


Sylvia    Scarlett  17 

that  was  why  her  father  had  come  away.  Sylvia  decided 
to  remain  in  France,  always  in  a  caravan  if  possible,  where 
no  English  miss  could  poke  about  with  bony  fingers  in  one's 
bread  and  butter. 

Sylvia  acquired  a  good  deal  of  worldly  wisdom  from 
being  so  continuously  in  the  society  of  Blanche,  and  for  a 
child  of  eleven  she  was  growing  up  somewhat  rapidly.  Yet 
it  would  have  been  hard  to  say  that  the  influence  of  her 
noisy  friend  was  hurtful,  for  it  never  roused  in  Sylvia  a 
single  morbid  thought.  Life  in  those  days  presented 
itself  to  her  mostly  as  an  amusing  game,  a  game  that 
sometimes  caused  tears,  but  tears  that  were  easily  dried, 
because,  after  all,  it  was  only  a  game.  Such  was  the 
situation  created  on  one  occasion  by  the  unexpected 
arrival  of  Blanche's  fiance  from  his  regiment,  the  yiyth 
of  the  line. 

The  company  was  playing  at  St.-Nazaire  at  the  time,  and 
Louis  Moreau  telegraphed  from  Nantes  that  he  had  been 
granted  a  conge  of  forty-eight  hours. 

"Mince,  alors!"  cried  Blanche  to  Sylvia.  "And,  you 
know,  I  don't  want  to  give  him  up,  because  he  has  thirty 
thousand  francs  and  he  loves  me  a  la  folie.  We  are  only 
waiting  till  he  has  finished  his  military  service  to  get 
married.  But  I  don't  want  him  here.  First  of  all,  I  have 
a  very  chic  lover,  who  has  a  poignon  fou  and  doesn't  care 
how  much  he  spends,  and  then  the  lover  of  my  heart  is 
here." 

Sylvia  protested  that  she  had  heard  the  last  claim  too 
often. 

"No,  but  this  is  something  much  greater  than  a  beguin. 
It  is  real  love.  //  est  tres  trr-es-beau  gar$on,  tu  sais.  And, 
chose  tres-drole,  he  also  is  doing  his  military  service  here. 
Tout  fa  ne  se  dessine  -pas  du  tout  bien,  tu  sais,  mats  pas  du 
tout,  tu  comprends!  Moi,  je  ne  suis  pas  veineuse.  Ah,  non, 
alors,  c'est  le  comble!" 

Blanche  had  been  sufficiently  agile  to  extract  the  usual 
wagonette  and  pair  of  horses  from  the  chic  lover  to  whom 
she  had  introduced  her  real  lover,  a  tall  cuirassier  with 
fierce  mustaches,  as  her  brother;  but  the  imminent 
arrival  of  Louis  was  going  to  spoil  all  this,  because  Louis 
knew  well  that  she  did  not  possess  a  relative  in  the  world, 


i8  Sylvia    Scarlett 

in  fact,  as  Blanche  emphasized,  her  solitary  position  had 
been  one  of  her  charms. 

"You'll  have  to  get  rid  of  Monsieur  Beaujour."  This 
was  the  rich  lover. 

"And  lose  my  horses?    Ah,  non,  alors!" 

"Well,  then  you'll  have  to  tell  Marcel  he  mustn't  come 
near  you  until  Louis  has  gone." 

"And  see  him  go  off  with  that  Jeanne  at  the  Clair  de  la 
Lune  Concert !" 

"Couldn't  Louis  pay  for  the  horses?"  suggested  Sylvia. 

"I'm  not  going  to  let  him  waste  his  money  like  that; 
besides,  he'll  only  be  here  two  nights.  C'est  assommant,  tu 
sais"  Blanche  sighed. 

In  the  middle  of  the  discussion  Louis  arrived,  a  very 
short  little  sous-officier  with  kind  watery  eyes  and  a  mus- 
tache that  could  only  be  seen  properly  out  of  doors.  Louis 
had  not  had  more  than  five  minutes  with  his  fiancee  before 
M.  Beaujour  drove  up  with  the  wagonette  and  pair.  He 
was  the  son  of  a  rich  shipping  agent  in  St.-Nazaire,  with  a 
stiff  manner  that  he  mistook  for  evidence  of  aristocratic 
descent,  and  bad  teeth  that  prevented  him  from  smiling 
more  than  he  could  help. 

"I  shall  tell  him  you're  my  brother,"  said  Blanche, 
quickly.  Louis  began  to  protest. 

"Pas  de  boniment,"  Blanche  went  on.  "I  must  be 
pleasant  to  strangers  in  front.  Madame  Bassompierre 
insists  on  that,  and  you  know  I've  never  given  you  any 
cause  to  be  really  jealous." 

M.  Beaujour  looked  very  much  surprised  when  Blanche 
presented  Louis  to  him  as  her  brother;  Sylvia,  remember- 
ing the  tall  cuirassier  with  the  fierce  mustaches  that  had 
also  been  introduced  as  Blanche's  brother,  appreciated  his 
sensations.  However,  he  accepted  the  relationship  and 
invited  Louis  to  accompany  them  on  the  drive,  putting 
him  with  Sylvia  and  seating  himself  next  Blanche  on  the 
box;  Louis,  who  found  Sylvia  sympathetic,  talked  all  the 
time  about  the  wonderful  qualities  of  Blanche,  continually 
turning  round  to  adore  her  shapely  back. 

M.  Beaujour  invited  Louis  to  a  supper  he  was  giving 
that  evening  in  honor  of  Blanche,  and  supposed,  perhaps  a 
little  maliciously,  that  Monsieur  would  be  glad  to  meet  his 


Sylvia    Scarlett  19 

brother  again,  who  was  also  to  be  of  the  party.  Louis 
looked  at  Blanche  in  perplexity;  she  frowned  at  him  and 
said  nothing. 

That  supper,  to  which  M.  and  Mme.  Perron  with  several 
other  members  of  the  company  were  invited,  was  a  very 
restless  meal.  First,  Blanche  would  go  out  with  the  host 
while  Marcel  and  Louis  glared  alternately  at  each  other 
and  the  door;  then  she  would  withdraw  with  Louis,  while 
M.  Beaujour  and  Marcel  glared  and  fidgeted;  finally  she 
would  disappear  with  Marcel,  once  for  such  a  long  time 
that  Sylvia  grew  nervous  and  went  outside  to  find  her. 
Blanche  was  in  tears;  Marcel  was  stalking  up  and  down  the 
passage,  twisting  his  fierce  mustaches  and  muttering  his 
annoyance.  Sylvia  was  involved  in  a  bitter  discussion 
about  the  various  degrees  of  Blanche's  love,  and  in  the  end 
Blanche  cried  that  her  whole  life  had  been  shattered,  and 
rushed  back  to  the  supper-room.  Sylvia  took  this  oppor- 
tunity of  representing  Blanche's  point  of  view  to  Marcel, 
and  so  successful  was  she  with  her  tale  of  the  emotional 
stress  caused  by  the  conflict  of  love  with  prudence  that 
finally  Marcel  burst  into  tears,  called  down  benedictions 
upon  Sylvia's  youthful  head,  and  rejoined  the  supper- 
party,  where  he  drank  a  great  quantity  of  red  wine  and 
squeezed  Blanche's  hand  under  the  table  for  the  rest  of  the 
evening. 

Sylvia,  having  been  successful  once,  now  invited  Louis 
to  accompany  her  outside.  To  him  she  explained  that 
Marcel  loved  Blanche  madly,  that  she,  the  owner,  as  Louis 
knew,  of  a  melting  heart,  had  been  much  upset  by  her  in- 
ability to  return  his  love,  and  that  Louis  must  not  be 
jealous,  because  Blanche  loved  only  him.  Louis's  eyes 
became  more  watery  than  ever,  and  he  took  his  seat  at 
table  again,  a  happy  man  until  he  drank  too  much  wine  and 
had  to  retire  permanently  from  the  feast.  Finally  Sylvia 
tackled  M.  Beaujour,  and,  recognizing  that  he  was  prob- 
ably tired  of  lies,  told  him  the  truth  of  the  situation, 
leaving  it  to  him  as  an  homme  superieur  to  realize  that  he 
could  only  be  an  episode  in  Blanche's  life  and  begging  him 
not  to  force  his  position  that  night.  M.  Beaujour  could  not 
help  being  flattered  by  this  child's  perception  of  his 
superiority,  and  for  the  rest  of  the  entertainment  played 


20  Sylvia    Scarlett 

the  host  in  a  manner  that  was,  as  Madame  Perron  said, 
tres  tres-correcte. 

However,  amusing  evenings  like  this  came  to  an  end  for 
Sylvia  when  once  more  the  caravan  returned  to  Lille.  Her 
uncle  and  aunt  had  so  much  enjoyed  her  company  that 
they  proposed  to  Madame  Snow  to  adopt  Sylvia  as  their 
own  daughter.  Sylvia,  much  as  she  loved  her  mother, 
would  have  been  very  glad  to  leave  the  house  at  Lille,  for 
it  seemed,  when  she  saw  it  again,  poverty-stricken  and 
pinched.  There  was  only  Valentine  now  left  of  her  sisters, 
and  her  mother  looked  very  care-worn.  Her  father,  how- 
ever, declined  most  positively  to  listen  to  the  Bassom- 
pierres'  proposal,  and  was  indeed  almost  insulting  about 
it.  Madame  Snow  wearily  bade  Sylvia  say  no  more,  and 
the  caravan  went  on  its  way  again.  Sylvia  wondered 
whether  life  in  Lille  had  always  been  as  dull  in  reality  as 
this,  or  if  it  were  dull  merely  in  contrast  with  the  gay  life 
of  vagrancy.  Everybody  in  Lille  seemed  to  be  quarreling. 
Her  mother  was  always  reproaching  Valentine  for  being 
late,  and  her  father  for  losing  money,  and  herself  for  idle- 
ness in  the  house.  She  tried  to  make  friends  with  her 
sister,  but  Valentine  was  suspicious  of  her  former  intimacy 
with  their  mother,  and  repelled  her  advances.  The 
months  dragged  on,  months  of  eternal  sewing,  eternal 
saving,  eternal  nagging,  eternal  sameness.  Then  one 
evening,  when  her  mother  was  standing  in  the  kitchen, 
giving  a  last  glance  at  everything  before  she  went  down  to 
the  theater,  she  suddenly  threw  up  her  arms,  cried  in  a 
choking  voice,  "Henri!"  and  collapsed  upon  the  floor. 
There  was  nobody  in  the  house  except  Sylvia,  who,  though 
she  felt  very  much  frightened,  tried  for  a  long  time,  without 
success,  to  restore  her  mother  to  consciousness.  At  last 
her  father  came  in  and  bent  over  his  wife. 

"Good  God,  she's  dead!"  he  exclaimed,  and  Sylvia 
broke  into  a  sweat  of  horror  to  think  that  she  had  been 
alone  in  the  twilight  with  something  dead.  Her  father 
struggled  to  lift  the  body  on  the  sofa,  calling  to  Sylvia  to 
come  and  help  him.  She  began  to  whimper,  and  he  swore 
at  her  for  cowardice.  A  clock  struck  and  Sylvia  shrieked. 
Her  father  began  to  drag  the  body  toward  the  sofa;  play- 
ing-cards fell  from  his  sleeves  on  the  dead  woman's  face. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  21 

"Didn't  she  say  anything  before  she  died?"  he  asked. 

Sylvia  shook  her  head. 

"She  was  only  forty-six,  you  know,"  he  said;  in  and 
out  of  his  fingers,  round  and  round  his  hand,  slipped  the 
ten-centime  piece. 

For  some  time  after  his  wife's  death  Henry  Snow  was 
inconsolable,  and  his  loudly  expressed  grief  had  the  effect 
of  making  Sylvia  seem  hard,  for  she  grew  impatient  with 
him,  especially  when  every  week  he  used  to  sell  some 
cherished  piece  of  furniture.  She  never  attempted  to 
explain  her  sentiments  when  he  accused  her  of  caring  more 
for  furniture  than  for  her  dead  mother;  she  felt  it  would 
be  useless  to  explain  them  to  him,  and  suffered  in  silence. 
What  Sylvia  found  most  inexplicable  was  the  way  in  which 
her  father  throve  on  sorrow  and  every  day  seemed  to  grow 
younger.  This  fact  struck  her  so  sharply  that  one  day  she 
penetrated  the  hostility  that  had  been  gathering  daily 
between  her  and  Valentine  and  asked  her  sister  if  she  had 
observed  this  queer  change.  Valentine  got  very  angry; 
demanded  what  Sylvia  meant;  flung  out  some  cruel  sneers; 
and  involved  her  in  a  scene  with  her  father,  who  charged 
her  with  malice  and  underhanded  behavior.  Sylvia  was 
completely  puzzled  by  the  effect  of  her  harmless  observa- 
tion, and  supposed  that  Valentine,  who  had  always  been 
jealous  of  her,  had  seized  the  opportunity  to  make  further 
mischief.  She  could  never  understand  why  Valentine  was 
jealous  of  her,  because  Valentine  was  really  beautiful,  and 
very  much  like  her  mother,  enviable  from  any  point  of 
view,  and  even  now  obviously  dearer  to  her  stepfather  than 
his  own  daughter.  She  would  have  liked  to  know  where 
the  caravan  was  now;  she  was  sure  that  her  father  would 
no  longer  wish  to  forbid  her  adoption  by  Uncle  Edouard 
and  Aunt  Elise. 

The  house  grew  emptier  and  emptier  of  furniture; 
Sylvia  found  it  so  hard  to  obtain  any  money  from  her 
father  for  current  expenses  that  she  was  often  hungry. 
She  did  not  like  to  write  to  any  of  her  older  sisters,  because 
she  was  afraid  that  Valentine  would  make  it  appear  that 
she  was  in  the  wrong  and  trying  to  stir  up  trouble.  Sum- 
mer passed  into  autumn,  and  with  the  lengthening  darkness 
the  house  became  unbearably  still;  neither  her  father  nor 


22  Sylvia    Scarlett 

her  sister  was  ever  at  home;  even  the  clocks  had  now  all 
disappeared.  Sylvia  could  not  bear  to  remain  indoors;  for 
in  her  nervous,  hungry  state  old  childish  terrors  were  re- 
vived, and  the  great  empty  loft  at  the  top  of  the  house  was 
once  again  inhabited  by  that  one-legged  man  with  whose 
clutches  her  mother  used  to  frighten  her  when  naughty 
long  ago.  There  recurred,  too,  a  story  told  by  her  mother 
on  just  such  a  gusty  evening  as  these,  of  how,  when  she 
first  came  to  Lille,  she  had  found  an  armed  burglar  under 
her  bed,  and  of  how  the  man  had  been  caught  and  im- 
prisoned. Even  her  mother,  who  was  not  a  nervous 
woman,  had  been  frightened  by  his  threats  of  revenge 
when  he  should  be  free  again,  and  once  when  she  and  her 
mother  were  sewing  together  close  to  the  dusky  window 
her  mother  had  fancied  she  had  seen  him  pass  the  house, 
a  large  pale  man  in  a  dark  suit.  Supposing  he  should  come 
back  now  for  his  revenge?  And  above  all  these  other  ter- 
rors was  the  dread  of  her  mother's  ghost. 

Sylvia  took  to  going  out  alone  every  evening,  whether  it 
rained  or  blew,  to  seek  in  the  streets  relief  from  the  silence 
of  the  desolate  house.  Loneliness  came  to  seem  to  her  the 
worst  suffering  imaginable,  and  the  fear  of  it  which  was 
bred  during  these  months  haunted  her  for  years  to  come. 

In  November,  about  half  past  eight  of  a  windy  night, 
Sylvia  came  back  from  one  of  her  solitary  walks  and  found 
her  father  sitting  with  a  bottle  of  brandy  in  the  kitchen. 
His  face  was  haggard;  his  collar  was  loose;  from  time  to 
time  he  mopped  his  forehead  with  a  big  blue  handkerchief 
and  stared  at  himself  in  a  small  cracked  shaving-glass  that 
he  must  have  brought  down  from  his  bedroom.  She  asked 
if  he  were  ill,  and  he  told  her  not  to  worry  him,  but  to  go 
out  and  borrow  a  railway  time-table. 

When  Sylvia  returned  she  heard  Valentine's  angry  voice 
in  the  kitchen,  and  waited  in  the  passage  to  know  the  cause 
of  the  dispute. 

"No,  I  won't  come  with  you,"  Valentine  was  saying. 
"You  must  be  mad!  If  you're  in  danger  of  going  to 
prison,  so  much  the  worse  for  you.  I've  got  plenty  of 
people  who'll  look  after  me." 

"But  I'm  your  stepfather." 

Valentine's  laugh  made  Sylvia  turn  pale. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  23 

"Stepfather!  Fine  stepfather!  Why,  I  hate  you!  Do 
you  hear?  I  hate  you!  My  man  is  waiting  for  me  now, 
and  he'll  laugh  when  he  hears  that  a  convict  wants  his  step- 
daughter to  go  away  with  him.  My  mother  may  have 
loved  you,  but  I'd  like  her  to  see  you  now.  V amour  de  sa 
vie.  Son  homme!  Sa  poupee,  sa  poupee!  Ah,  ma-is  non 
alors!  Sa  poupee!" 

Sylvia  could  not  bear  any  longer  this  mockery  of  her 
mother's  love,  and,  bursting  into  the  kitchen,  she  began  to 
abuse  Valentine  with  all  the  vulgar  words  she  had  learned 
from  Blanche. 

Valentine  caught  her  sister  by  the  shoulders  and  shook 
her  violently: 

"  Tu  seras  bien  avec  ton  pere,  sale  gosse!" 

Then  she  smacked  her  cheek  several  times  and  left  the 
house. 

Sylvia  flung  her  arms  round  her  father. 

"Take  me  with  you,"  she  cried.  "You  hate  her,  don't 
you?  Take  me,  father." 

Henry  rose  and,  in  rising,  upset  the  bottle  of  brandy. 

"Thank  God,"  he  said,  fervently.  "My  own  daughter 
still  loves  me." 

Sylvia  perceived  nothing  ludicrous  in  the  tone  of  her 
father's  speech,  and  happy  tears  rose  to  her  eyes. 

"See!  here  is  the  time-table.  Must  we  go  to-night? 
Sha'n't  we  go  to-night?" 

She  helped  her  father  to  pack;  at  midnight  they  were  in 
the  train  going  north. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  amount  of  brandy  that  Henry  Snow  had  drunk 
to  support  what  he  called  his  misfortune  made  him 
loquacious  for  the  first  part  of  the  journey.  While  he  and 
Sylvia  waited  during  the  night  at  a  railway  junction,  he 
held  forth  at  length  not  merely  upon  the  event  that  was 
driving  him  out  of  France,  but  generally  upon  the  whole 
course  of  his  life.  Sylvia  was  glad  that  her  father  treated 
her  as  if  she  were  grown  up,  because  having  conceived  for 
him  a  kind  of  maternal  solicitude,  not  so  much  from  pity 
or  affection  as  from  the  inspiration  to  quit  Lille  forever 
which  she  gratefully  owed  to  his  lapse,  she  had  no  inten- 
tion of  letting  him  re-establish  any  authority  over  herself. 
His  life's  history,  poured  forth  while  they  paced  the  dark 
platform  or  huddled  before  the  stove  in  the  dim  waiting- 
room,  confirmed  her  resolve. 

"Of  course,  when  I  first  got  that  job  in  Lille  it  seemed 
just  what  I  was  looking  for.  I'd  had  a  very  scrappy  educa- 
tion, because  my  father,  who  was  cashier  in  a  bank,  died, 
and  my  mother,  who  you're  a  bit  like — I  used  to  have  a 
photograph  of  her,  but  I  suppose  it's  lost,  like  everything 
else — my  mother  got  run  over  and  killed  coming  back 
from  the  funeral.  There's  something  funny  about  that, 
you  know.  I  remember  your  mother  laughed  very  much 
when  I  told  her  about  it  once.  But  I  didn't  laugh  at  the 
time,  I  can  tell  you,  because  it  meant  two  aunts  playing 
battledore  and  shuttlecock.  Don't  interrupt,  there's  a 
good  girl.  It's  a  sort  of  game.  I  can't  remember  what  it 
is  in  French.  I  dare  say  it  doesn't  exist  in  France.  You'll 
have  to  stick  to  English  now.  Good  old  England,  it's 
not  a  bad  place.  Well,  these  two  aunts  of  mine  grudged 
every  penny  they  spent  on  me,  but  one  of  them  got 
married  to  a  man  who  knew  the  firm  I  worked  for  in 
Lille.  That's  how  I  came  to  France.  Where  are  my 


Sylvia    Scarlett  25 

aunts  now?  Dead,  I  hope.  Don't  you  fret,  Sylvia,  we 
sha'n't  trouble  any  of  our  relations  for  a  long  time  to  come. 
Then  after  I'd  been  in  France  about  four  years  I  married 
your  mother.  If  you  ask  me  why,  I  can't  tell  you.  I 
loved  her;  but  the  thing  was  wrong  somehow.  It  put  me 
in  a  false  position.  Well,  look  at  me!  I'm  only  thirty- 
four  now.  Who'd  think  you  were  my  daughter? 

"And  while  we're  talking  on  serious  subjects,  let  me  give 
you  a  bit  of  advice.  Keep  off  jealousy.  Jealousy  is  hell; 
and  your  mother  was  jealous.  Well — Frenchwomen  are 
more  jealous  than  Englishwomen.  You  can't  get  over  that 
fact.  The  scenes  I've  had  with  her.  It  was  no  good  my 
pointing  out  that  she  was  fourteen  years  older  than  me. 
Not  a  bit  of  good.  It  made  her  worse.  That's  why  I  took 
to  reading.  I  had  to  get  away  from  her  sometimes  and 
shut  myself  up.  That's  why  I  took  to  cards.  And  that's 
where  your  mother  was  wrong.  She'd  rather  I  gambled 
away  her  money,  because  it's  no  use  to  pretend  that  it 
wasn't  her  money,  than  go  and  sit  at  a  cafe  and  perhaps 
observe — mind  you,  simply  observe — another  woman.  I 
used  to  drink  a  bit  too  much  when  we  were  first  married, 
but  it  caused  such  rows  that  I  gave  that  up.  I  remember 
I  broke  an  umbrella  ^nce,  and  you'd  really  have  thought 
there  wasn't  another  umbrella  in  the  whole  world.  Why, 
that  little  drop  of  brandy  I  drank  to-night  has  made  me 
feel  quite  funny.  I'm  not  used  to  it.  But  there  was  some 
excuse  for  drinking  to-night.  I've  had  runs  of  bad  luck 
before,  but  anything  like  these  last  two  months  I've  never 
had  in  my  life.  The  consequence  was  I  borrowed  some  of 
my  salary  in  advance  without  consulting  anybody.  That's 
where  the  manager  had  me  this  afternoon.  He  couldn't 
see  that  it  was  merely  borrowing.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the 
sum  wasn't  worth  an  argument;  but  he  wasn't  content 
with  that;  he  actually  told  me  he  was  going  to  examine — 
well — you  wouldn't  understand  if  I  tried  to  explain  to  you. 
It  would  take  a  commercial  training  to  understand  what 
I've  been  doing.  Anyway,  I  made  up  my  mind  to  make  a 
bolt  for  it.  Now  don't  run  away  with  the  notion  that  the 
police  will  be  after  me,  because  I  very  much  hope  they 
won't.  In  fact,  I  don't  think  they'll  do  anything.  But  the 
whole  affair  gave  me  a  shock  and  Valentine's  behavior 


26  Sylvia    Scarlett 

upset  me.  You  see,  when  your  mother  was  alive  if  I'd  had 
a  bad  week  she  used  to  help  me  out;  but  Valentine  actu- 
ally asked  me  for  money.  She  accused  me  of  all  sorts  of 
things  which,  luckily,  you're  too  young  to  understand; 
and  I  really  didn't  like  to  refuse  her  when  I'd  got  the 
money. 

"Well,  it's  been  a  lesson  to  me  and  I  tell  you  I've  missed 
your  mother  these  last  months.  She  was  jealous;  she  was 
close;  she  had  a  tongue;  but  a  finer  woman  never  lived, 
and  I'm  proud  of  her.  She  used  to  wish  you  were  a  boy. 
Well,  I  don't  blame  her.  After  all,  she'd  had  six  girls, 
and  what  use  are  they  to  anybody?  None  at  all.  They 
might  as  well  not  exist.  Women  go  off  and  get  married  and 
take  somebody  else's  name,  and  it's  finished.  There's  not 
one  of  your  sisters  that's  really  stayed  in  the  family.  A 
selfish  crowd,  and  the  worst  of  the  lot  was  Valentine.  Yes, 
you  ought  to  have  been  a  boy.  I'll  tell  you  what,  it 
wouldn't  be  a  bad  idea  if  you  were  a  boy  for  a  bit.  You 
see,  in  case  the  French  police  make  inquiries,  it  would  be 
just  as  well  to  throw  them  off  the  scent;  and,  another 
thing,  it  would  be  much  easier  for  me  till  I  find  my  feet 
again  in  London.  Would  you  like  to  be  a  boy,  Sylvia? 
There's  no  reason  against  it  that  I  can  see,  and  plenty  of 
reasons  for  it.  Of  course  it  means  cutting  off  your  hair, 
but  they  say  that's  a  very  good  thing  for  the  hair  once  in  a 
way.  You'll  be  more  free,  too,  as  a  boy,  and  less  of  a 
responsibility.  There's  no  doubt  a  girl  would  be  a  big 
responsibility  in  London." 

"But  could  I  be  a  boy?"  Sylvia  asked.  "I'd  like  to  be  a 
boy  if  I  could.  And  what  should  I  be  called  ?" 

"Of  course  you  could  be  a  boy,"  her  father  affirmed, 
enthusiastically.  "You  were  always  a  bit  of  a  gar  on 
manque^  as  the  French  say.  I'll  buy  you  a  Norfolk  suit." 

Sylvia  was  not  yet  sufficiently  unsexed  not  to  want  to 
know  more  about  her  proposed  costume.  Her  father 
pledged  his  word  that  it  would  please  her;  his  description 
of  it  recalled  the  dress  that  people  in  Lille  put  on  to  go 
shooting  sparrows  on  Sunday. 

"  Un  sporting?"  Sylvia  queried. 

"That's  about  it,"  her  father  agreed.  "If  you  had  any 
scissors  with  you,  I'd  start  right  in  now  and  cut  your  hair." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  27 

Sylvia  said  she  had  scissors  in  her  bag;  and  presently  she 
and  her  father  retired  to  the  outer  gloom  of  the  junction, 
where,  undisturbed  by  a  single  curious  glance,  Sylvia's 
curls  were  swept  away  by  the  wind. 

"I've  not  done  it  quite  so  neatly  as  I  might,"  said  her 
father,  examining  the  effect  under  a  wavering  gas-jet. 
"I'll  have  you  properly  cropped  to-morrow  at  a  hair- 
dresser's." 

Sylvia  felt  cold  and  bare  round  the  neck,  but  she  wel- 
comed the  sensation  as  one  of  freedom.  How  remote  Lille 
seemed  already — utterly,  gloriously  far  away!  Now  arose 
the  problem  of  her  name. 

"The  only  boy's  name  I  can  think  of  that's  anything  like 
Sylvia  is  Silas,  and  that's  more  Si  than  Sil.  Wait  a  bit. 
What  about  Silvius?  I've  seen  that  name  somewhere. 
Only,  we'll  call  you  Sil  for  short." 

"Why  was  I  ever  called  Sylvia?"  she  asked. 

"It  was  a  fancy  of  your  mother's.  It  comes  in  a  song 
called  ' Plaisir  d' amour*  And  your  mother  liked  the 
English  way  of  saying  it.  I've  got  it.  Sylvester!  Sylvester 
Snow!  What  do  you  want  better  than  that?" 

When  the  train  approached  Boulogne,  Henry  Snow  gave 
up  talking  and  began  to  juggle  with  the  ten-centime  piece; 
while  they  were  walking  along  to  the  boat  he  looked  about 
him  furtively.  Nobody  stopped  them,  however;  and 
with  the  kind  of  relief  she  had  felt  when  she  had  brought 
her  album  safely  over  the  frontier  Sylvia  saw  the 
coast  of  France  recede.  There  were  many  English  people 
on  the  boat,  and  Sylvia  watched  them  with  such  concen- 
tration that  several  elderly  ladies  at  whom  she  stared  in 
turn  thought  she  was  waiting  for  them  to  be  sick,  and 
irritably  waved  her  away.  The  main  impression  of  her 
fellow-travelers  was  their  resemblance  to  the  blind  beggars 
that  one  saw  sitting  outside  churches.  She  was  tempted  to 
drop  a  sou  in  one  of  the  basins,  but  forbore,  not  feeling 
quite  sure  how  such  humor  would  appeal  to  the  English. 
Presently  she  managed  to  engage  in  conversation  an 
English  girl  of  her  own  age,  but  she  had  not  got  far  with 
the  many  questions  she  wanted  to  ask  when  her  companion 
was  whisked  away  and  she  heard  a  voice  reproving  her  for 
talking  to  strange  little  girls.  Sylvia  decided  that  the 


28  Sylvia    Scarlett 

strangeness  of  her  appearance  must  be  due  to  her  short 
hair,  and  she  longed  for  the  complete  transformation. 
Soon  it  began  to  rain;  the  shores  of  that  mysterious  land 
to  which  she  actually  belonged  swam  toward  her.  Her 
father  came  up  from  below,  where,  as  he  explained,  he  had 
been  trying  to  sleep  off  the  effects  of  a  bad  night.  Indeed, 
he  did  not  recover  his  usual  jauntiness  until  they  were  in 
the  train,  traveling  through  country  that  seemed  to  Sylvia 
not  very  different  from  the  country  of  France.  Would 
London,  after  all,  prove  to  be  very  different  from  Lille? 
Then  slowly  the  compartment  grew  dark,  and  from  time 
to  time  the  train  stopped. 

"A  fog,"  said  her  father,  and  he  explained  to  her  the 
meaning  of  a  London  fog. 

It  grew  darker  and  darker,  with  a  yellowish-brown  dark- 
ness that  was  unlike  any  obscurity  she  had  ever  known. 

"Bit  of  luck,"  said  her  father.  "We  sha'n't  be  noticed 
in  this.  Phew!  It  is  thick.  We'd  better  go  to  some  hotel 
close  by  for  to-night.  No  good  setting  out  to  look  for 
rooms  in  this." 

In  the  kitchen  at  Lille  there  had  been  a  picture  called 
"The  Impenitent  Sinner,"  in  which  demons  were  seen 
dragging  a  dead  man  from  his  bed  into  flames  and  dark- 
ness; Sylvia  pointed  out  its  likeness  to  the  present  scene  at 
Charing  Cross.  Outside  the  station  it  was  even  worse. 
There  was  a  thunderous  din;  horses  came  suddenly  out  of 
the  darkness;  everybody  seemed  to  be  shouting;  boys 
were  running  along  with  torches;  it  was  impossible  to 
breathe. 

"Why  did  they  build  a  city  here?"  she  inquired. 

At  last  they  came  to  a  house  in  a  quieter  street,  where 
they  walked  up  high,  narrow  stairs  to  their  bedrooms. 

The  next  morning  her  father  took  Sylvia's  measurements 
and  told  her  not  to  get  up  before  he  came  back.  When  she 
walked  out  beside  him  in  a  Norfolk  suit  nobody  seemed  to 
stare  at  her;  when  her  hair  had  been  properly  cut  by  a 
barber  and  she  could  look  at  herself  in  a  long  glass,  she 
plunged  her  hands  into  her  trousers  pockets  and  felt  se- 
curely a  boy. 

While  they  were  walking  to  a  mysterious  place  called  the 
Underground,  her  father  asked  if  she  had  caught  bronchitis, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  29 

and  he  would  scarcely  accept  her  word  that  she  was  trying 
to  practise  whistling. 

"Well,  don't  do  it  when  I'm  inquiring  about  rooms  or 
the  people  in  the  house  may  think  it's  something  infec- 
tious," he  advised.  "And  don't  forget  your  name's 
Sylvester.  Which  reminds  me  it  wouldn't  be  a  bad  notion 
if  I  was  to  change  my  own  name.  There's  no  sense  in  run- 
ning one's  head  into  a  noose,  and  if  inquiries  were  made  by 
the  police  it  would  be  foolish  to  ram  my  name  right  down 
their  throats.  Henry  Snow.  What  about  Henry  White? 
Better  keep  to  the  same  initials.  I've  got  it.  Henry 
Scarlett.  You  couldn't  find  anything  more  opposite  to 
Snow  than  that." 

Thus  Sylvia  Snow  became  Sylvester  Scarlett. 

After  a  long  search  they  took  rooms  with  Mrs.  Thread- 
gould,  a  widow  who  with  her  two  boys,  Willie  and  Ernie, 
lived  at  45  Pomona  Terrace,  Shepherd's  Bush.  There 
were  no  other  lodgers,  for  the  house  was  small;  and  Henry 
Scarlett  decided  it  was  just  the  place  in  which  to  stay 
quietly  for  a  while  until  the  small  sum  of  money  he  had 
brought  with  him  from  Lille  was  finished,  when  it  would 
be  necessary  to  look  for  work.  Meanwhile  he  announced 
that  he  should  study  very  carefully  the  advertisements  in 
the  daily  papers,  leaving  everybody  with  the  impression 
that  reading  advertisements  was  a  most  erudite  business,  a 
kind  of  scientific  training  that  when  the  moment  arrived 
would  produce  practical  results. 

Sylvia  meanwhile  was  enjoined  to  amuse  herself  in  the 
company  of  Mrs.  Threadgould's  two  boys,  who  were  about 
her  own  age.  It  happened  that  at  this  time  Willie  Thread- 
gould,  the. elder,  was  obsessed  by  secret  societies,  to  which 
his  brother  Ernie  and  many  other  boys  in  the  neighbor- 
hood had  recently  been  initiated.  Sylvia  was  regarded 
with  suspicion  by  Willie  until  she  was  able  to  thrill  him 
with  the  story  of  various  criminal  associations  in  France 
and  so  became  his  lieutenant  in  all  enterprises.  Most  of 
the  secret  societies  that  had  been  rapidly  formed  by  Willie 
and  as  rapidly  dissolved  had  possessed  a  merely  academic 
value;  now  with  Sylvia's  advent  they  were  given  a  practical 
intention.  Secrecy  for  secrecy's  sake  went  out  of  fashion. 
Muffling  the  face  in  dusters,  giving  the  sign  and  counter- 


30  Sylvia    Scarlett 

sign,  lurking  at  the  corner  of  the  road  to  meet  another 
conspirator,  were  excellent  decorations,  but  Sylvia  pointed 
out  that  they  led  nowhere  and  produced  nothing;  to 
illustrate  her  theory  she  proposed  a  secret  society  for 
ringing  other  people's  bells.  She  put  this  forward  as  a 
kind  of  elementary  exercise;  but  she  urged  that,  when  the 
neighborhood  had  realized  the  bell-ringing  as  something 
to  which  they  were  more  continuously  exposed  than  other 
neighborhoods,  the  moment  would  be  ripe  to  form  another 
secret  society  that  should  inflict  a  more  serious  nuisance. 
From  the  secret  society  that  existed  to  be  a  nuisance 
would  grow  another  secret  society  that  existed  to  be  a 
threat;  and  finally  there  seemed  no  reason  why  Willie 
Threadgould  (Sylvia  was  still  feminine  enough  to  let 
Willie  think  it  was  Willie)  should  control  Shepherd's  Bush 
and  emulate  the  most  remarkable  brigands  of  history. 
In  the  end  Sylvia's  imagination  banished  her  from  the 
ultimate  power  at  which  she  aimed.  The  Secret  Society 
for  Ringing  Other  People's  Bells  did  its  work  so  well  that 
extra  policemen  were  put  on  duty  to  cope  with  the  nuisance 
and  an  inspector  made  a  house-to-house  visitation,  which 
gave  her  father  such  a  shock  that  he  left  Pomona  Terrace 
the  next  day  and  took  a  room  in  Lillie  Road,  Fulham. 

"We  have  been  betrayed,"  Sylvia  assured  Willie.  "Do 
not  forget  to  avenge  my  capture." 

Willie  vowed  he  would  let  nothing  interfere  with  his 
vengeance,  not  even  if  the  traitor  turned  out  to  be  his  own 
brother  Ernie. 

Sylvia  asked  if  he  would  kill  him,  and  reminded  Willie 
that  it  was  a  serious  thing  to  betray  a  secret  society  when 
that  society  was  doing  something  more  than  dressing  up. 
Willie  doubted  if  it  would  be  possible  to  kill  the  culprit, 
but  swore  that  he  should  prefer  death  to  what  should 
happen  to  him. 

Sylvia  was  so  much  gratified  by  Willie's  severity  that  she 
led  him  into  a  corner,  where,  having  exacted  his  silence 
with  the  most  solemn  oaths,  she  betrayed  herself  and  the 
secret  of  her  sex;  then  they  embraced.  When  they  parted 
forever  next  day,  Sylvia  felt  that  she  had  left  behind  her 
in  Willie's  heart  a  romantic  memory  that  would  never 
fade. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  31 

Mrs.  Meares,  who  kept  the  house  in  Lillie  Road,  was  an 
Irishwoman  whose  husband  had  grown  tired  of  her  gen- 
tility and  left  her.  She  did  not  herself  sum  up  her  past  so 
tersely  as  this,  but  Sylvia  was  sure  that  Mr.  Meares  had 
left  her  because  he  could  no  longer  endure  the  stories  about 
her  royal  descent.  Perhaps  he  might  have  been  able  to 
endure  his  wife's  royal  descent,  because,  after  all,  he  had 
married  into  the  family  and  might  have  extracted  some 
pride  out  of  that  fact;  but  all  her  friends  apparently  came 
from  kings  and  queens,  too.  Ireland,  if  Mrs.  Meares  was 
to  be  believed,  consisted  of  one  large  poverty-stricken 
royal  family,  which  must  have  cheapened  the  alliance  for 
Mr.  Meares.  It  was  lucky  that  he  was  still  alive,  for  other- 
wise Sylvia  was  sure  that  her  father  would  have  married 
their  new  landlady,  such  admiration  did  he  always  express 
for  the  manner  in  which  she  struggled  against  misfortune 
without  losing  her  dignity.  This,  from  what  Sylvia  could 
see,  consisted  of  wearing  silk  skirts  that  trailed  in  the  dust 
of  her  ill-kept  house  and  of  her  fanning  herself  in  an  arm- 
chair however  cold  the  weather.  The  only  thing  that 
stirred  her  to  action  was  the  necessity  of  averting  an  ill- 
omen.  Thus,  she  would  turn  back  on  a  flight  of  stairs 
rather  than  pass  anybody  descending;  although  ordinarily 
when  she  went  up-stairs  she  used  to  sigh  and  hold  her 
heart  at  every  step.  Sylvia  remembered  her  mother's 
scrupulous  care  of  her  house,  even  in  the  poorest  days; 
she  could  not  help  contrasting  her  dignity  with  this  Irish 
dignity  that  was  content  to  see  indefinite  fried  eggs  on  her 
table,  cockroaches  in  the  bedrooms,  and  her  own  placket 
always  agape.  Mrs.  Meares  used  to  say  that  she  would 
never  let  any  of  her  rooms  to  ladies,  because  ladies  always 
fussed. 

"Gentlemen  are  so  much  more  considerate,"  said  Mrs. 
Meares. 

Their  willingness  to  be  imposed  upon  made  Sylvia  con- 
temptuous of  the  sex  she  had  adopted,  and  she  tried  to 
spur  her  father  to  protest  when  his  bed  was  still  unmade  at 
four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 

"Why  don't  you  make  it?'*  he  suggested.  "I  don't 
like  to  worry  poor  Mrs.  Meares." 

Sylvia,  however  contemptuous  of  manhood,  had  no  in- 

3 


32  Sylvia    Scarlett 

tention  of  relinquishing  its  privileges;  she  firmly  declined 
to  have  anything  to  do  with  the  making  of  beds. 

The  breakfast-room  was  placed  below  the  level  of  the 
street.  Here,  in  an  atmosphere  of  cat-haunted  upholstery 
and  broken  springs,  of  overcooked  vegetables  and  dingy 
fires,  yet  withal  of  a  kind  of  frowsy  comfort,  Sylvia  some- 
times met  the  other  lodgers.  One  of  them  was  Baron  von 
Statten,  a  queer  German,  whom  Sylvia  could  not  make  out 
at  all,  for  he  spoke  English  as  if  he  had  been  taught  by  a 
maid-of-all-work  with  a  bad  cold,  powdered  his  pink  face, 
and  wore  three  rings,  yet  was  so  poor  that  sometimes  he 
stayed  in  bed  for  a  week  at  a  stretch,  pending  negotiations 
with  his  laundress.  The  last  piece  of  information  Sylvia 
obtained  from  Clara,  the  servant,  who  professed  a  great 
contempt  for  the  baron.  Mrs.  Meares,  on  the  other  hand, 
derived  much  pride  from  his  position  in  her  house,  which 
she  pointed  out  was  really  that  of  an  honored  guest,  since 
he  owed  now  nearly  seven  weeks'  rent;  she  never  failed  to 
refer  to  him  by  his  title  with  warm  affection.  Another 
lodger  was  a  Welsh  pianist  called  Morgan,  who  played  the 
piano  all  day  long  and  billiards  for  as  much  of  the  night  as 
he  could.  He  was  a  bad-tempered  young  man  with  long 
black  hair  and  a  great  antipathy  to  the  baron,  whom  he 
was  always  trying  to  insult;  indeed,  once  at  breakfast  he 
actually  poured  a  cup  of  coffee  over  him. 

"Mr.  Morgan!"  Mrs.  Meares  had  cried.  "No  Irish- 
man would  have  done  that." 

"No  Irishman  would  ever  do  anything,"  the  pianist 
snapped,  "if  he  could  get  somebody  else  to  do  it  for 
him." 

Sylvia  welcomed  the  assault,  because  the  scalding  coffee 
drove  the  baron  to  unbutton  his  waistcoat  in  a  frenzy  of 
discomfort  and  thereby  confirmed  Clara's  legend  about 
the  scarcity  of  his  linen. 

The  third  lodger  was  Mr.  James  Monkley,  about  whom 
Sylvia  was  undecided;  sometimes  she  liked  him  very  much, 
at  other  times  she  disliked  him  equally.  He  had  curly  red 
hair,  finely  cut  red  lips,  a  clear  complexion,  and  an  author- 
itative, determined  manner,  but  his  eyes,  instead  of  being 
the  pleasant  blue  they  ought  to  have  been  in  such  a  face, 
were  of  a  shade  of  muddy  green  and  never  changed  their 


Sylvia    Scarlett  33 

expression.  Sylvia  once  mentioned  about  Mr.  Monkley's 
eyes  to  Clara,  who  said  they  were  like  a  fish. 

"But  Monkley's  not  like  a  fish,"  Sylvia  argued. 

"I  don't  know  what  he's  like,  I'm  sure,"  said  Clara. 
"All  I  know  is  he  gives  any  one  the  creeps  something 
shocking  whenever  he  stares,  which  he's  forever  doing. 
Well,  fine  feathers  don't  make  a  summer  and  he  looks  best 
who  looks  last,  as  they  say." 

One  reason  for  disliking  Mr.  Monkley  was  his  intimacy 
with  her  father.  Sylvia  would  not  have  objected  to  this 
if  it  had  not  meant  long  confabulations  during  which  she 
was  banished  from  the  room  and,  what  was  worse,  thrown 
into  the  society  .of  Mrs.  Meares,  who  always  seemed  to 
catch  her  when  she  was  trying  to  make  her  way  down-stairs 
to  Clara. 

"Come  in  and  talk  to  me,"  Mrs.  Meares  would  say. 
"I'm  just  tidying  up  my  bedroom.  Ah,  Sil,  if  God  had 
not  willed  otherwise  I  should  have  had  a  boy  just  your  age 
now.  Poor  little  innocent!" 

Sylvia  knew  too  well  this  counterpart  of  hers  and  hated 
him  as  much  in  his  baby's  grave  as  she  might  have  done 
were  he  still  her  competitor  in  life. 

"Ah,  it's  a  terrible  thing  to  be  left  as  I've  been  left,  to 
be  married  and  not  married,  to  have  been  a  mother  and  to 
have  lost  my  child.  And  I  was  never  intended  for  this  life. 
My  father  kept  horses.  We  had  a  carriage.  But  they  say, 
'trust  an  Irishwoman  to  turn  her  hand  to  anything/  And 
it's  true.  There's  many  people  would  wonder  how  I  do  it 
with  only  one  maid.  How's  your  dear  father?  He  seems 
comfortable.  Ah,  it's  a  privilege  to  look  after  a  gentleman 
like  him.  He  seems  to  have  led  a  most  adventurous  life. 
Most  of  his  time  spent  abroad,  he  tells  me.  Well,  travel 
gives  an  air  to  a  man.  Ah,  now  if  one  of  the  cats  hasn't 
been  naughty  just  when  I'd  got  my  room  really  tidy!  Will 
you  tell  Clara,  if  you  are  going  down-stairs,  to  bring  up  a 
dustpan  ?  I  don't  mind  asking  you,  for  at  your  age  I  think 
you  would  be  glad  to  wait  on  the  ladies  like  a  little  gentle- 
man. Sure,  as  your  father  said  the  other  day,  it's  a  very 
good  thing  you're  in  a  lady's  house.  That's  why  the  dear 
baron's  so  content;  and  the  poor  man  has  much  to  try  him, 
for  his  relations  in  Berlin  have  treated  him  abominably.". 


34  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Such  speeches  inflicted  upon  her  because  Monkley 
wanted  to  talk  secrets  with  her  father  made  her  disapprove 
of  Monkley.  Nevertheless,  she  admired  him  in  a  way;  he 
was  the  only  person  in  the  house  who  was  not  limp,  except 
Mr.  Morgan,  the  pianist;  but  he  used  to  glare  at  her,  when 
they  occasionally  met,  and  seemed  to  regard  her  as  an 
unpleasant  result  of  being  late  for  breakfast,  like  a  spot  on 
the  table-cloth  made  by  a  predecessor's  egg. 

Monkley  used  to  ask  Sylvia  sometimes  about  what  she 
was  going  to  do.  Naturally  he  treated  her  future  as  a  boy's 
future,  which  took  most  of  the  interest  out  of  the  conversa- 
tion; for  Sylvia  did  not  suppose  that  she  would  be  able  to 
remain  a  boy  very  much  longer.  The  mortifying  fact,  too, 
was  that  she  was  not  getting  anything  out  of  her  trans- 
formation: for  all  the  fun  she  was  having,  she  might  as 
well  have  stayed  a  girl.  There  had  been  a  brief  vista  of 
liberty  at  Pomona  Terrace;  here,  beyond  going  out  to  buy 
a  paper  or  tobacco  for  her  father,  she  spent  most  of  her 
time  in  gossiping  with  Clara,  which  she  could  probably 
have  done  more  profitably  in  petticoats. 

Winter  drew  out  to  spring;  to  the  confabulations 
between  Jimmy  Monkley  and  Henry  Scarlett  were  now 
added  absences  from  the  house  that  lasted  for  a  day  or  two 
at  a  time.  These  expeditions  always  began  with  the 
friends'  dressing  up  in  pearl-buttoned  overcoats  very  much 
cut  in  at  the  waist.  Sylvia  felt  that  such  careful  attention 
to  externals  augured  the  great  secrecy  and  importance  of 
the  enterprise;  remembering  the  effect  of  Willie  Thread- 
gould's  duster-shrouded  countenance  upon  his  fellow- 
conspirators,  she  postulated  to  herself  that  with  the 
human  race,  particularly  the  male  portion,  dress  was  al- 
ways the  prelude  to  action.  One  morning  after  breakfast, 
when  Monkley  and  her  father  had  hurried  off  to  catch  a 
train,  the  baron  said  in  his  mincing  voice: 

"Off  ra-c-cing  again!    They  do  enjoy  themselves-s-s." 

She  asked  what  racing  meant,  and  the  baron  replied : 

"Hors-s-se-ra-c-cing,  of  cour-se." 

Sylvia,  being  determined  to  arrive  at  the  truth  of  this 
business,  put  the  baron  through  a  long  interrogation,  from 
which  she  managed  to  learn  that  the  jockeys  wore  colored 
silk  jackets  and  that  in  his  prosperous  days  the  baron  had 


Sylvia    Scarlett  35 

found  the  sport  too  exciting  for  his  heart.  After  breakfast 
Sylvia  took  the  subject  with  her  into  the  kitchen,  and  tried 
to  obtain  fuller  information  from  Clara,  who,  with  the 
prospect  of  a  long  morning's  work,  was  disinclined  to  be 
communicative. 

"What  a  boy  you  are  for  asking  questions!  Why  don't 
you  ask  your  dad  when  he  comes  home,  or  that  Monkley? 
As  if  I'd  got  time  to  talk  about  racing.  I've  got  enough 
racing  of  my  own  to  think  about;  but  if  it  goes  on  much 
longer  I  shall  race  off  out  of  it  one  of  these  days,  and  that's 
a  fact.  You  may  take  a  pitcher  to  the  well,  but  you  can't 
make  it  drink,  as  they  say." 

Sylvia  withdrew  for  a  while,  but  later  in  the  afternoon 
she  approached  Clara  again. 

"God  bless  the  boy!  He's  got  racing  on  the  brain," 
the  maid  exclaimed.  "I  had  a  young  man  like  that  once, 
but  I  soon  gave  him  the  go-by.  He  was  that  stuffed  up 
with  halfpenny  papers  he  couldn't  cuddle  any  one  without 
crackling  like  an  egg-shell.  'Don't  carry  on  so,  Clara,' 
he  said  to  me.  'I  had  a  winner  to-day  in  the  three-thirty.' 
'Did  you?'  I  answered,  very  cool.  'Well,  you've  got  a 
loser  now,'  and  with  that  I  walked  off  very  dignified  and 
left  him.  It's  the  last  straw,  they  say,  that  gives  the  camel 
the  hump.  And  he  properly  gave  me  the  hump.  But  I 
reckon,  I  do,  that  it's  mugs  like  him  as  keeps  your  dad  and 
that  Monkley  so  smart-looking.  I  reckon  most  of  the 
racing  they  do  is  racing  to  see  which  can  get  some  silly 
josser  to  give  them  his  money  first." 

Sylvia  informed  Clara  that  her  father  used  to  play  cards 
for  money  in  France. 

"There  you  are.  What  did  I  tell  you?"  Clara  went 
on.  "Nap,  they  call  it,  but  I  reckon  that  there  Monkley 
keeps  wide  enough  awake.  Oh,  he's  an  artful  one,  he  is! 
Birds  and  feathers  keep  together,  they  say,  and  I  reckon 
your  dad's  cleverer  than  what  he  makes  out  to  be." 

Sylvia  produced  in  support  of  this  idea  her  father's 
habit  of  juggling  with  a  penny. 

"What  did  I  tell  you?"  Clara  exclaimed,  triumphantly. 
"Take  it  from  me,  Sil,  the  two  of  them  has  a  rare  old  time 
with  this  racing.  I've  got  a  friend,  Maudie  Tilt,  who's  in 
service,  and  her  brother  started  off  to  be  a  jockey,  only  he 


36  Sylvia    Scarlett 

never  got  very  far,  because  he  got  kicked  on  the  head  by  a 
horse  when  he  was  sweeping  out  the  stable,  which  was  very 
aggravating  for  his  relations,  because  he  had  a  sister  who 
died  in  a  galloping  consumption  the  same  week.  I  reckon 
horses  was  very  unlucky  for  them,  I  do.'* 

"My  grandmother  got  run  over  coming  back  from  my 
grandfather's  funeral,"  Sylvia  proclaimed. 

"By  the  hearse?"  Clara  asked,  awestruck. 

Sylvia  felt  it  would  be  well  to  make  the  most  of  her  story, 
and  replied  without  hesitation  in  the  affirmative. 

"Well,  they  say  to  meet  an  empty  hearse  means  a 
pleasant  surprise,"  said  Clara.  "But  I  reckon  your  grand- 
ma didn't  think  so.  Here,  I'll  tell  you  what,  my  next 
afternoon  off  I'll  take  you  round  to  see  Maudie  Tilt.  She 
lives  not  far  from  where  the  Cedars  'bus  stops." 

About  a  week  after  this  conversation  Clara,  wearing 
balloon  sleeves  of  last  year's  fashion  and  with  her  hair 
banked  up  to  support  a  monstrous  hat,  descended  into  the 
basement,  whence  she  and  Sylvia  emerged  into  a  fine  April 
afternoon  and  hailed  an  omnibus. 

"Mind  you  don't  get  blown  off  the  top,  miss,"  said  the 
conductor,  with  a  glance  at  Clara's  sleeves. 

"No  fear  of  that.  I've  grown  a  bit  heavier  since  I  saw 
your  face,"  Clara  replied,  climbing  serenely  to  the  top  of 
the  omnibus.  "Two,  as  far  as  you  go,"  she  said,  handing 
twopence  to  the  conductor  when  he  came  up  for  the  fares. 

"  I  could  go  a  long  way  with  you,  miss,"  he  said,  punching 
the  tickets  with  a  satisfied  twinkle.  "What  a  lovely  hat!" 

"Is  it?  Well,  don't  start  in  trying  to  eat  it  because 
you've  been  used  to  green  food  all  your  life." 

"Your  sister  answers  very  sharp,  doesn't  she,  Tommy?" 
said  the  conductor  to  Sylvia. 

After  this  display  of  raillery  Sylvia  felt  it  would  be  weak 
merely  to  point  out  that  Clara  was  not  a  sister,  so  she 
remained  silent. 

The  top  of  the  omnibus  was  empty  except  for  Clara  and 
Sylvia;  the  conductor,  whistling  a  cheerful  tune,  descended 
again. 

"Saucy  things,"  Clara  commented.  "But  there,  you 
can't  blame  them.  It  makes  any  one  feel  cheerful  to  be  out 
in  the  open  air  like  this." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  37 

Maudie's  house  in  Castleford  Road  was  soon  reached 
after  they  left  the  omnibus.  When  they  rang  the  area  bell, 
Maudie  herself  opened  the  door. 

"Oh,  you  did  give  me  a  turn!'*  she  exclaimed.  "I 
thought  it  was  early  for  the  milkman.  You  couldn't  have 
come  at  a  better  time,  because  they've  both  gone  away. 
She's  been  ill,  and  they'll  be  away  for  a  month.  Cook's 
gone  for  a  holiday,  and  I'm  all  alone." 

Sylvia  was  presented  formally  to  the  hostess;  and  when, 
at  Clara's  prompting,  she  had  told  the  story  of  her  grand- 
mother's death,  conversation  became  easy.  Maudie  Tilt 
took  them  all  over  the  house,  and,  though  Clara  said  she 
should  die  of  nervousness,  insisted  upon  their  having  tea 
in  the  drawing-room. 

"Supposing  they  come  back,"  Clara  whispered.  "Oh, 
lor'!  Whatever's  that?" 

Maudie  told  her  not  to  be  silly,  and  went  on  to  boast 
that  she  did  not  care  if  they  did  come  back,  because  she 
had  made  up  her  mind  to  give  up  domestic  service  and  go 
on  the  stage. 

"Fancy!"  said  Clara.  "Whoever  put  that  idea  into 
your  head?" 

"Well,  I  started  learning  some  of  the  songs  they  sing  in 
the  halls,  and  some  friends  of  mine  gave  a  party  last 
January  and  I  made  quite  a  hit.  I'll  sing  you  a  song  now, 
if  you  like." 

And  Maudie,  sitting  down  at  the  piano,  accompanied 
herself  with  much  effect  in  one  of  Miss  Vesta  Victoria's 
songs. 

"For  goodness'  sake  keep  quiet,  Maudie,"  Clara 
begged.  "You'll  have  the  neighbors  coming  'round  to 
see  whatever's  the  matter.  You  have  got  a  cheek." 

Sylvia  thoroughly  enjoyed  Maudie's  performance  and 
thought  she  would  have  a  great  success.  She  liked 
Maudie's  smallness  and  neatness  and  glittering,  dark  eyes. 
Altogether  it  was  a  delightful  afternoon,  and  she  was  sorry 
to  go  away. 

"Come  again,"  cried  Maudie,  "before  they  come  back, 
and  we'll  have  some  more." 

"Oh,  I  did  feel  frightened!"  Clara  said,  when  she  and 
Sylvia  were  hurrying  to  catch  the  omnibus  back  to  Lillie 


38  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Road.  "I  couldn't  enjoy  it,  not  a  bit.  I  felt  as  if  I  was  in 
the  bath  and  the  door  not  bolted,  though  they  do  say 
stolen  fruit  is  the  sweetest." 

When  she  got  home,  Sylvia  found  that  her  father  had 
returned  also,  and  she  held  forth  on  the  joys  of  Maudie 
Tilt's  house. 

"Wants  to  go  on  the  stage,  does  she?"  said  Monkley, 
who  was  in  the  room.  "Well,  you'd  better  introduce  us 
and  we'll  see  what  we  can  do.  Eh,  Harry?" 

Sylvia  approved  of  this  suggestion  and  eagerly  vouched 
for  Maudie's  willingness. 

"We'll  have  a  little  supper-party,"  said  Monkley.  "Sil 
can  go  round  and  tell  her  we're  coming." 

Sylvia  blessed  the  persistency  with  which  she  had 
worried  Clara  on  the  subject  of  racing;  otherwise,  bisexual 
and  solitary,  she  might  have  been  moping  in  Lillie  Road. 
She  hoped  that  Maudie  Tilt  would  not  offer  any  objections 
to  the  proposed  party,  and  determined  to  point  out  most 
persuasively  the  benefit  of  Monkley's  patronage,  if  she 
really  meant  to  go  on  the  stage.  However,  Maudie  was 
not  at  all  difficult  to  convince  and  showed  herself  as  eager 
for  the  party  as  Sylvia  herself.  She  was  greatly  impressed 
by  her  visitor's  experience  of  the  stage,  but  reckoned  that 
no  boys  should  have  pinched  her  legs  or  given  her  the 
broken  masks. 

"You  ought  to  have  punched  into  them,"  she  said. 
"Still,  I  dare  say  it  wasn't  so  easy  for  you,  not  being  a  girl. 
Boys  are  very  nasty  to  one  another,  when  they'd  be  as  nice 
as  anything  to  a  girl." 

Sylvia  was  conscious  of  a  faint  feeling  of  contempt  for 
Maudie's  judgment,  and  she  wondered  from  what  her 
illusions  were  derived. 

Clara,  when  she  heard  of  the  proposed  party,  was 
dubious.  She  had  no  confidence  in  Monkley,  and  said  so 
frankly. 

"No  one  wants  to  go  chasing  after  a  servant-girl  for 
nothing,"  she  declared.  "Every  cloud's  got  a  silver 
lining." 

"But  what  could  he  want  to  do  wrong?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Ah,  now  you're  asking.  But  if  I  was  Maudie  Tilt  I'd 
keep  myself  to  myself." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  39 

Clara  snapped  out  the  last  remark  and  would  say  noth- 
ing more  on  the  subject. 

A  few  days  later,  under  Sylvia's  guidance,  James  Monk- 
ley  and  Henry  Scarlett  sought  Castleford  Road.  Maudie 
had  put  on  a  black  silk  dress,  and  with  her  hair  done  in 
what  she  called  the  French  fashion  she  achieved  a  kind  of 
Japanese  piquancy. 

"N'est-ce  pas  quelle  a  un  chic?"  Sylvia  whispered  to  her 
father. 

They  had  supper  in  the  dining-room  and  made  a  good 
deal  of  noise  over  it,  for  Monkley  had  brought  two  bottles 
of  champagne,  and  Maudie  could  not  resist  producing  a 
bottle  of  cognac  from  her  master's  cellar.  When  Monkley 
asked  if  everything  were  not  kept  under  lock  and  key, 
Maudie  told  him  that  if  they  couldn't  trust  her  they  could 
lump  it;  she  could  jolly  soon  find  another  place;  and, 
any  way,  she  intended  to  get  on  the  stage  somehow.  After 
supper  they  went  up-stairs  to  the  drawing-room;  and 
Maudie  was  going  to  sit  down  at  the  piano,  when  Monkley 
told  her  that  he  would  accompany  her,  because  he  wanted 
to  see  how  she  danced.  Maudie  gave  a  most  spirited  per- 
formance, kicking  up  her  legs  and  stamping  until  the 
ornaments  on  the  mantelpiece  rattled.  Then  Monkley 
showed  Maudie  where  she  could  make  improvements  in 
her  renderings,  which  surprised  Sylvia  very  much,  because 
she  had  never  connected  Monkley  with  anything  like  this. 

"Quite  an  artist  is  Jimmy,"  Henry  Scarlett  declared. 
Then  he  added  in  an  undertone  to  Sylvia:  "He's  a  won- 
derful chap,  you  know.  I've  taken  a  rare  fancy  to  him. 
Do  anything.  Sharp  as  a  needle.  I  may  as  well  say  right 
out  that  he's  made  all  the  difference  to  my  life  in  London." 

Presently  Monkley  suggested  that  Maudie  should  show 
them  over  the  house,  and  they  went  farther  up-stairs  to  the 
principal  bedroom,  where  fhe  two  men  soused  their  heads 
with  the  various  hair-washes  left  behind  by  the  master  of 
the  house.  Henry  expressed  a  desire  to  have  a  bath,  and 
retired  with  an  enormous  sponge  and  a  box  of  bath-salts. 
Monkley  began  to  flirt  with  Maudie;  Sylvia,  feeling  that 
the  evening  was  becoming  rather  dull,  went  down-stairs 
again  to  the  drawing-room  and  tried  to  pass  the  time  away 
with  a  stereoscope. 


40  Sylvia    Scarlett 

After  that  evening  Monkley  and  Scarlett  went  often  to 
see  Maudie,  but,  much  to  Sylvia's  resentment,  they  never 
took  her  with  them.  When  she  grumbled  about  this  to 
Clara,  Clara  told  her  that  she  was  well  out  of  it. 

"Too  many  cooks  drink  up  the  soup,  which  means 
you're  one  too  many,  my  lad,  and  a  rolling  stone  doesn't 
let  the  grass  grow  under  its  feet,  which  means  as  that 
Monkley's  got  some  game  on." 

Sylvia  did  not  agree  with  Clara's  point  of  view;  she  still 
felt  aggrieved  by  being  left  out  of  everything.  Luckily, 
when  life  in  Lillie  Road  was  becoming  utterly  dull  again,  a 
baboon  escaped  from  Earl's  Court  Exhibition,  climbed  up 
the  drain-pipe  outside  the  house,  and  walked  into  Mrs. 
Meares's  bedroom;  so  that  for  some  time  after  this  she  had 
palpitations  whenever  a  bell  rang.  Mr.  Morgan  was  very 
unkind  about  her  adventure,  for  he  declared  that  the 
baboon  looked  so  much  like  an  Irishman  that  she  must 
have  thought  it  was  her  husband  come  back;  Mr.  Morgan 
had  been  practising  the  Waldstein  Sonata  at  the  time,  and 
had  been  irritated  by  the  interruption  of  a  wandering  ape. 

A  fortnight  after  this  there  was  a  scene  in  the  house 
that  touched  Sylvia  more  sharply,  for  Maudie  Tilt  arrived 
one  morning  and  begged  to  speak  with  Mr.  Monkley,  who, 
being  in  the  Scarletts'  room  at  the  moment,  looked  sud- 
denly at  Sylvia's  father  with  a  question  in  his  eyes. 

"I  told  you  not  to  take  them  all,"  Henry  said. 

"I'll  soon  calm  her  down,"  Monkley  promised.  "If 
you  hadn't  insisted  on  taking  those  bottles  of  hair-wash 
she'd  never  have  thought  of  looking  to  see  if  the  other 
things  were  still  there/' 

Henry  indicated  his  daughter  with  a  gesture. 

"Rot!  The  kid's  got  to  stand  in  on  this,"  Monkley 
said,  with  a  laugh.  "After  all,  it  was  he  who  introduced 
us.  I'll  bring  her  up  here  to  talk  it  out,"  he  added. 

Presently  he  returned  with  Maudie,  who  had  very  red 
eyes  and  a  frightened  expression. 

"Oh,  Jimmy!"  she  burst  out.  "Whatever  did  you  want 
to  take  that  jewelry  for?  I  only  found  out  last  night,  and 
they'll  be  home  to-morrow.  Whatever  am  I  going  to  say?" 

"Jewelry?"  repeated  Monkley,  in  a  puzzled  voice. 
"Harry  took  some  hair-wash,  if  that's  what  you  mean." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  41 

"Jewelry?"  Henry  murmured,  taking  the  cue  from  his 
friend.  "Was  there  any  jewelry?'* 

"Oh,  don't  pretend  you  don't  know  nothing  about  it,'* 
Maudie  cried,  dissolving  into  tears.  "  For  the  love  of  God 

Jive  it  to  me,  so  as  I  can  put  it  back.  If  you're  hard  up, 
immy,  you  can  take  what  I  saved  for  the  stage;  but  give 
us  back  that  jewelry." 

"If  you  act  like  that  you'll  make  your  fortune  as  a 
professional,"  Monkley  sneered. 

Maudie  turned  to  Sylvia  in  desperation.  "Sil,"  she 
cried,  "make  them  give  it  back.  It  '11  be  the  ruin  of  me. 
Why,  it's  burglary!  Oh,  whatever  shall  I  do?" 

Maudie  flung  herself  down  on  the  bed  and  wept  con- 
vulsively. Sylvia  felt  her  heart  beating  fast,  but  she 
strung  herself  up  to  the  encounter  and  faced  Monkley. 

"What's  the  good  of  saying  you  haven't  got  the  jewelry," 
she  cried,  "when  you  know  you  have?  Give  it  to  her  or 
I'll — I'll  go  out  into  the  middle  of  the  road  and  shout  at 
the  top  of  my  voice  that  there's  a  snake  in  the  house,  and 
people  will  have  to  come  in  and  look  for  it,  because  when 
they  didn't  believe  about  the  baboon  in  Mrs.  Meares's 
room  the  baboon  was  there  all  the  time." 

She  stopped  and  challenged  Monkley  with  flashing  eyes, 
head  thrown  back,  and  agitated  breast. 

"You  oughtn't  to  talk  to  a  grown-up  person  like  that, 
you  know,"  said  her  father. 

Something  unspeakably  soft  in  his  attitude  infuriated 
Sylvia,  and  spinning  round  she  flashed  out  at  him: 

"If  you  don't  make  Monkley  give  back  the  things  you 
stole  I'll  tell  everybody  about  you.  I  mean  it.  I'll  tell 
everybody."  She  stamped  her  feet. 

"That's  a  daughter,"  said  Henry.  "That's  the  way 
they're  bringing  them  up 'nowadays — to  turn  round  on 
their  fathers." 

"A  daughter?"  Monkley  echoed,  with  an  odd  look  at  his 
friend. 

"I  mean  son,"  said  Henry,  weakly.  "Anyway,  it's  all 
the  same." 

Monkley  seemed  to  pay  no  more  attention  to  the  slip, 
but  went  over  to  Maudie  and  began  to  coax  her. 

"Come  on,  Maudie,  don't  turn  away  from  a  good  pal. 


42  Sylvia    Scarlett 

What  if  we  did  take  a  few  things?  They  shouldn't  have 
left  them  behind.  People  deserve  to  lose  things  if  they're 
so  careless." 

"That's  quite  true,"  Henry  agreed,  virtuously.  "It  'II 
be  a  lesson  to  them." 

"Go  back  and  pack  up  your  things,  my  dear,  and  get 
out  of  the  house.  I'll  see  you  through.  You  shall  take 
another  name  and  go  on  the  stage  right  away.  What's  the 
good  of  crying  over  a  few  rings  and  bangles?" 

But  Maudie  refused  to  be  comforted.  "Give  them  back 
to  me.  Give  them  back  to  me,"  she  moaned. 

"Oh,  all  right,"  Monkley  said,  suddenly.  "But  you're 
no  sport,  Maudie.  You've  got  the  chance  of  your  life  and 
you're  turning  it  down.  Well,  don't  blame  me  if  you  find 
yourself  still  a  slavey  five  years  hence." 

Monkley  went  down-stairs  and  came  back  again  in  a 
minute  or  two  with  a  parcel  wrapped  up  in  tissue-paper. 

"You  haven't  kept  anything  back?"  Maudie  asked, 
anxiously. 

"My  dear  girl,  you  ought  to  know  how  many  there  were. 
Count  them." 

"Would  you  like  me  to  give  you  back  the  hair-wash?" 
Henry  asked,  indignantly. 

Maudie  rose  to  go  away. 

"You're  not  angry  with  me,  Jim?"  she  asked,  plead- 
ingly. 

"Oh,  get  out!"  he  snapped. 

Maudie  turned  pale  and  rushed  from  the  rqom. 

"Silly  b h,"  Monkley  said.  "Well,  it's  been  a  very 

instructive  morning,"  he  added,  fixing  Sylvia  with  his 
green  eyes  and  making  her  feel  uncomfortable. 

"Some  people  make  a  fuss  about  the  least  little  thing," 
Henry  said.  "There  was  just  the  same  trouble  when  I 
pawned  my  wife's  jewelry.  Coming  round  the  corner  to 
have  one?"  he  inquired,  looking  at  Monkley,  who  said  he 
would  join  him  presently  and  followed  him  out  of  the 
room. 

When  she  was  alone,  Sylvia  tried  to  put  her  emotions  in 
order,  without  success.  She  had  wished  for  excitement, 
but,  now  that  it  had  arrived,  she  wished  it  had  kept  away 
from  her.  She  was  not  so  much  shocked  by  the  revelation 


Sylvia    Scarlett  43 

of  what  her  father  and  Monkley  had  done  (though  she  re- 
sented their  cowardly  treatment  of  Maudie),  as  frightened 
by  what  might  ultimately  happen  to  her  in  their  company. 
They  might  at  any  moment  find  themselves  in  prison,  and 
if  she  were  to  be  let  out  before  the  others,  what  would  she 
do?  She  would  be  utterly  alone  and  would  starve;  or, 
what  seemed  more  likely,  they  would  be  arrested  and  she 
would  remain  in  Lillie  Road,  waiting  for  news  and  perhaps 
compelled  to  earn  her  living  by  working  for  Mrs.  Meares. 
At  all  costs  she  must  be  kept  informed  of  what  was  going 
on.  If  her  father  tried  to  shut  her  out  of  his  confidence, 
she  would  appeal  to  Monkley.  Her  meditation  was  in- 
terrupted by  Monkley  himself. 

"So  you're  a  little  girl,'*  he  said,  suddenly.  "Fancy 
that." 

"What  if  I  am?"  challenged  Sylvia,  who  saw  no  hope  of 
successfully  denying  the  accusation. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  Monkley  murmured.  "It's  more 
fun,  that's  all.  But,  look  here,  girl  or  boy,  don't  let  me 
ever  have  any  more  heroics  from  you.  D'ye  hear?  Or, 
by  God!  Fll- 

Sylvia  felt  that  the  only  way  of  dealing  with  Monkley 
was  to  stand  up  to  him  from  the  first. 

"Oh,  shut  up!"  she  broke  in.  "You  can't  frighten  me. 
Next  time,  perhaps  you'll  tell  me  beforehand  what  you're 
going  to  do,  and  then  I'll  see  if  I'll  let  you  do  it." 

He  began  to  laugh.    "You've  got  some  pluck." 

"Why?" 

"Why,  to  cheek  me  like  that." 

"I'm  not  Maudie,  you  see,"  Sylvia  pointed  out. 

Presently  a  spasm  of  self-consciousness  made  her  long  to 
be  once  more  in  petticoats,  and,  grabbing  wildly  at  her 
flying  boyhood,  she  said  how  much  she  wanted  to  have 
adventures.  Monkley  promised  she  should  have  as  many 
as  she  liked,  and  bade  her  farewell,  saying  that  he  was 
going  to  join  her  father  in  a  saloon  bar  round  the  corner. 
Sylvia  volunteered  to  accompany  him,  and  after  a  momen- 
tary hesitation  he  agreed  to  take  her.  On  the  stairs  they 
overtook  the  baron,  very  much  dressed  up,  who,  in  answer 
to  an  inquiry  from  Monkley,  informed  them  that  he  was. 
going  to  lunch  with  the  Emperor  of  Byzantium, 


44  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Give  my  love  to  the  Empress,"  Monkley  laughed. 

"It's-s  nothing  to  laugh  at,"  the  baron  said,  severely. 
"He  lives  in  West  Kensington." 

"Next  door  to  the  Pope,  I  suppose,"  Monkley  went  on. 

"You  never  will  be  serious,  but  I'll  take  you  there  one 
afternoon,  if  you  don't  believe  me." 

The  baron  continued  on  his  way  down-stairs  with  a  kind 
of  mincing  dignity,  and  Mrs.  Meares  came  out  of  her  bed- 
room. 

"Isn't  it  nice  for  the  dear  baron?"  she  purred.  "He's 
received  some  of  his  money  from  Berlin,  and  at  last  he  can 
go  and  look  up  his  old  friends.  He's  lunching  with  the 
Emperor  to-day." 

"I  hope  he  won't  drop  his  crown  in  the  soup,"  Monkley 
said. 

"Ah,  give  over  laughing,  Mr.  Monkley,  for  I  like  to 
think  of  the  poor  baron  in  the  society  to  which  he  belongs. 
And  he  doesn't  forget  his  old  friends.  But  there,  after  all, 
why  would  he,  for,  though  I'm  living  in  Lillie  Road,  I've 
got  the  real  spirit  of  the  past  in  my  blood,  and  the  idea  of 
meeting  the  Emperor  doesn't  elate  me  at  all.  It  seems 
somehow  as  if  I  were  used  to  meeting  emperors." 

On  the  way  to  the  public  house  Monkley  held  forth  to 
Sylvia  on  the  prevalence  of  human  folly,  and  vowed  that 
he  would  hold  the  baron  to  his  promise  and  visit  the 
Emperor  himself. 

"And  take  me  with  you?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"You  seem  very  keen  on  the  new  partnership,"  he 
observed. 

"I  don't  want  to  be  left  out  of  things,"  she  explained. 
"Not  out  of  anything.  It  makes  me  look  stupid.  Father 
treats  me  like  a  little  girl;  but  it's  he  who's  stupid, 
really." 

They  had  reached  the  public  house,  and  Henry  was 
taken  aback  by  Sylvia's  arrival.  She,  for  her  part,  was 
rather  disappointed  in  the  saloon  bar.  The  words  had 
conjured  something  much. more  sumptuous  than  this  place 
that  reminded  her  of  a  chemist's  shop. 

"I  don't  want  the  boy  to  start  learning  to  drink,"  Henry 
protested. 

Monkley  told  him  to  give  up  the  fiction  of  Sylvia's  boy- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  45 

hood  with  him,  to  which  Henry  replied  that,  though,  as 
far  as  he  knew,  he  had  only  been  sitting  here  ten  minutes, 
Jimmy  and  Sylvia  seemed  to  have  settled  the  whole  world 
between  them  in  that  time. 

"What's  more,  if  she's  going  to  remain  a  boy  any  longer, 
she's  got  to  have  some  new  clothes,"  Monkley  announced. 

Sylvia  flushed  with  pleasure,  recognizing  that  co- 
operative action  of  which  preliminary  dressing-up  was  the 
pledge. 

"You  see,  I've  promised  to  take  her  round  with  me  to 
the  Emperor  of  Byzantium." 

"I  don't  know  that  pub,"  said  Henry.  "Is  it  Walham 
Green  way?" 

Monkley  told  him  about  meeting  the  baron,  and  put 
forward  his  theory  that  people  who  were  willing  to  be 
duped  by  the  Emperor  of  Byzantium  would  be  equally 
willing  to  be  duped  by  other  people,  with  much  profit  to 
the  other  people. 

"Meaning  you  and  me?"  said  Henry. 

"Well,  in  this  case  I  propose  to  leave  you  out  of  the  first 
act,"  Monkley  said.  "I'm  going  to  have  a  look  at  the 
scene  myself.  There's  no  one  like  you  with  the  cards, 
Harry,  but  when  it  comes  to  the  patter  I  think  you'll  give 
me  first." 

Presently,  Sylvia  was  wearing  Etons,  at  Monkley's  sug- 
gestion, and  waiting  in  a  dream  of  anticipation;  the  baron 
proclaimed  that  the  Emperor  would  hold  a  reception  on 
the  first  Thursday  in  June.  When  Monkley  said  he  wanted 
young  Sylvester  to  go  with  them,  the  baron  looked  doubt- 
ful; but  Monkley  remarked  that  he  had  seen  the  baron 
coming  out  of  a  certain  house  in  Earl's  Court  Road  the 
other  day,  which  seemed  to  agitate  him  and  make  him 
anxious  for  Sylvia  to  attend  the  reception. 

Outside  the  very  commonplace  house  in  Stanmore 
Crescent,  where  the  Emperor  of  Byzantium  lived,  Monkley 
told  the  baron  that  he  did  not  wish  anything  said  about 
Sylvester's  father.  Did  the  baron  understand  ?  He  wished 
a  certain  mystery  to  surround  Sylvester.  The  baron  after 
his  adventure  in  Earl's  Court  Road  would  appreciate  the 
importance  of  secrecy. 

"You  are  a  regular  devil,  Monkley,"  said  von  Statten,  in 


46  Sylvia    Scarlett 

his  most  mincing  voice.  Remembering  the  saloon  bar, 
Sylvia  had  made  up  her  mind  not  to  be  disappointed  if  the 
Emperor's  reception  failed  to  be  very  exciting;  yet  on  the 
whole  she  was  rather  impressed.  To  be  sure,  the  entrance 
hall  of  14  Stanmore  Crescent  was  not  very  imperial;  but 
a  footman  took  their  silk  hats,  and,  though  Monkley  whis- 
pered that  he  was  carrying  them  like  flower-pots  and  was 
evidently  the  jobbing  gardener  from  round  the  corner, 
Sylvia  was  agreeably  awed,  especially  when  they  were 
invited  to  proceed  to  the  antechamber. 

"In  other  words,  the  dining-room,"  said  Monkley  to  the 
baron. 

"Hush!  Don't  you  see  the  throne-room  beyond?"  the 
baron  whispered. 

Sure  enough,  opening  out  of  the  antechamber  was  a 
smaller  room  in  which  was  a  dais  covered  with  purple 
cloth.  On  a  high  Venetian  chair  sat  the  Emperor,  a  young 
man  with  dark,  bristling  hair,  in  evening  dress.  Sylvia 
stood  on  tiptoe  to  get  a  better  look  at  him;  but  there  was 
such  a  crush  in  the  entrance  to  the  throne-room  that  she 
had  to  be  content  for  the  present  with  staring  at  the 
numerous  courtiers  and  listening  to  Monkley's  whispered 
jokes,  which  the  baron  tried  in  vain  to  stop. 

"I  suppose  where  the  young  man  with  a  head  like  a 
door-mat  and  a  face  like  a  scraper  is  sitting  is  where  the 
Imperial  family  congregates  after  dinner.  I'd  like  to  see 
what's  under  that  purple  cloth.  Packing-cases,  I'll  bet  a 
quid." 

"Hush!  hush!  not  so  loud,"  the  baron  implored.  "Here's 
Captain  Grayrigg,  the  Emperor's  father." 

He  pointed  to  a  very  small  man  with  pouched  eyes  and  a 
close-cropped  pointed  beard. 

"Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  the  Emperor  hasn't  made  his 
father  a  field-marshal?  He  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  him- 
self." 

"My  dear  man,  Captain  Grayrigg  married  the  late 
Empress.  He  is  nothing  himself." 

"I  suppose  he  has  to  knock  the  packing-cases  together 
and  pay  for  the  ices." 

But  the  baron  had  pressed  forward  to  meet  Captain 
Grayrigg  and  did  not  answer.  Presently  he  came  back 


Sylvia    Scarlett  47 

very  officiously  and  beckoned  to  Monkley,  whom  he  intro- 
duced. 

"From  New  York  City,  Colonel,"  said  Monkley,  with  a 
quick  glance  at  the  baron. 

Sylvia  nearly  laughed,  because  Jimmy  was  talking 
through  his  nose  in  the  most  extraordinary  way. 

"Ah!  an  American,"  said  Captain  Grayrigg.  "Then 
I  expect  this  sort  of  thing  strikes  you  as  quite  ridiculous." 

"Why,  no,  Colonel.  Between  ourselves  I  may  as  well 
tell  you  I'm  over  here  myself  on  a  job  not  unconnected 
with  royalty." 

Monkley  indicated  Sylvia  with  a  significant  look. 

"This  little  French  boy  who  is  called  Master  Sylvestre 
at  present  may  be  heard  of  later." 

Jimmy  had  accentuated  her  nationality.  Sylvia,  quick 
enough  to  see  what  he  wanted  her  to  do,  replied  in  French. 

A  tall  young  man  with  an  olive  complexion  and  priestly 
gestures,  standing  close  by, pricked  up  his  ears  at  Monkley's 
remark.  When  Captain  Grayrigg  had  retired  he  came 
forward  and  introduced  himself  as  the  Prince  de  Conde. 

Monkley  seemed  to  be  sizing  up  the  prince;  then 
abruptly  with  an  air  of  great  cordiality  he  took  his  arm. 

"Say,  Prince,  let's  go  and  find  an  ice.  I  guess  you're  the 
man  I've  been  looking  for  ever  since  I  landed  in  England." 

They  moved  off  together  to  find  refreshment.  Sylvia 
was  left  in  the  antechamber,  which  was  filled  with  a  most 
extraordinary  crowd  of  people.  There  were  young  men 
with  very  pink  cheeks  who  all  wore  white  roses  or  white 
carnations  in  their  buttonholes;  there  was  a  battered- 
looking  woman  with  a  wreath  of  laurel  in  her  hair  who 
suddenly  began  to  declaim  in  a  wailful  voice.  Everybody 
said,  "Hush,"  and  tried  to  avoid  catching  his  neighbor's 
eye.  At  first,  Sylvia  decided  that  the  lady  must  be  a 
lunatic  whom  people  had  to  humor,  because  her  remarks 
had  nothing  to  do  with  the  reception  and  were  not  even 
intelligible;  then  she  decided  that  she  was  a  ventriloquist 
who  was  imitating  a  cat.  An  old  gentleman  in  kilts  was 
standing  near  her,  and  Sylvia  remembered  that  once  in 
France  she  had  seen  somebody  dressed  like  that,  who  had 
danced  in  a  tent;  this  lent  color  to  the  theory  of  their 
both  being  entertainers.  The  old  gentleman  asked  the 

4 


48  Sylvia    Scarlett 

baron  if  he  had  the  Gaelic,  and  the  baron  said  he  had  not; 
whereupon  the  old  gentleman  sniffed  very  loudly,  which 
made  Sylvia  feel  rather  uncomfortable,  because,  though 
she  had  not  eaten  garlic,  she  had  eaten  onions  for  lunch. 
Presently  the  old  gentleman  moved  away  and  she  asked  the 
baron  when  he  was  going  to  begin  his  dance;  the  baron 
told  her  that  he  was  the  chief  of  a  great  Scottish  clan  and 
that  he  always  dressed  like  that.  A  clergyman  with  two 
black-and-white  dogs  under  his  arms  was  walking  about 
and  protesting  in  a  high  voice  that  he  couldn't  shake 
hands;  and  a  lady  in  a  Grecian  tunic,  standing  near  Sylvia, 
tried  to  explain  to  her  in  French  that  the  dogs  were  de- 
scended from  King  Charles  I.  Sylvia  wanted  to  tell  her 
she  spoke  English,  because  she  was  sure  something  had 
gone  wrong  with  the  explanation,  owing  to  the  lady's 
French;  but  she  did  not  like  to  do  so  after  Jimmy's  de- 
liberate insistence  upon  her  nationality. 

Presently  a  very  fussy  woman  with  along,  stringy  neck, 
bulging  eyes,  and  arched  fingers  came  into  the  antechamber 
and  wanted  to  know  who  had  not  yet  been  presented  to  the 
Emperor.  Sylvia  looked  round  for  Jimmy,  but  he  was 
nowhere  to  be  seen,  and,  being  determined  not  to  go  away 
without  entering  the  throne-room,  she  said  loudly: 

" Mai,  je  n'ai  pas  encore  vu  fempereur" 

"Oh,  the  little  darling!"  trilled  the  fussy  woman. 
"  Fenez  avec  moi,  je  vous  presenterai  moi-meme" 

"How  beautifully  Miss  Widgett  speaks  French!"  some- 
body murmured,  when  Sylvia  was  being  led  into  the 
throne-room.  "It's  such  a  gift." 

Sylvia  was  very  much  impressed  by  a  large  orange  flag 
nailed  to  the  wall  above  the  Emperor's  throne. 

"Le  drapeau  imperiale  de  Byzance"  Miss  Widgett  said. 
"  Foyez-vous  I'aigle  avec  deux  tetes.  II  etait  fait  pour  sa 
majeste  imperiale  par  le  Societe  du  roi  Charles  I  de  West 
London." 

"King  Charles  again,"  Sylvia  thought. 

"//  faut  baiser  la  main"  Miss  Widgett  prompted. 
Sylvia  followed  out  the  suggestion;  and  the  Emperor,  to 
whom  Miss  Widgett  had  whispered  a  few  words,  said: 

"Ah,  vous  etes  fran^ais"  and  to  Miss  Widgett,  "Who 
did  you  say  he  was  ?" 


Sylvia    Scarlett  49 

"I  really  don't  know.  He  came  with  Baron  von  Statten. 
Comment  vous  appelez-vous?"  Miss  Widgett  asked,  turning 
to  Sylvia. 

Sylvia  answered  that  she  was  called  Monsieur  Sylvestre, 
and  just  then  a  most  unusual  squealing  was  heard  in  the 
antechamber. 

"  Mon  dieul  qu'est-ce  que  c'est  que  $a?"  Sylvia  cried. 

"C'est  le — comment  dit-on  bagpipes  en  Fran$ais?  C'est 
le  'baagpeep'  vous  savez,"  which  left  Sylvia  as  wise  as  she 
was  before.  However,  as  there  was  no  general  panic,  she 
ceased  to  be  frightened.  Soon  she  saw  Jimmy  beckoning 
to  her  from  the  antechamber,  and  shortly  afterward  they 
left  the  reception,  which  had  interested  Sylvia  very  much, 
though  she  regretted  that  nobody  had  offered  her  an  ice. 

Monkley  congratulated  Sylvia  upon  her  quickness  in 
grasping  that  he  had  wanted  her  to  pretend  she  was  French, 
and  by  his  praise  roused  in  her  the  sense  of  ambition, 
which,  though  at  present  it  was  nothing  more  than  a  desire 
to  please  him  personally,  marked,  nevertheless,  a  step 
forward  in  the  development  of  her  character;  certainly 
from  this  moment  the  old  fear  of  having  no  one  to  look  after 
her  began  to  diminish,  and  though  she  still  viewed  with 
pleasure  the  prospect  of  being  alone,  she  began  to  have  a 
faint  conception  of  making  herself  indispensable,  perceiv- 
ing dimly  the  independence  that  would  naturally  follow. 
Meanwhile,  however  gratifying  Monkley's  compliment,  it 
could  not  compensate  her  for  the  ice  she  had  not  been 
given,  and  Sylvia  made  this  so  plain  to  him  that  he  invited 
her  into  a  confectioner's  shop  on  the  way  home  and  gave 
her  a  larger  ice  than  any  she  had  seen  at  the  Emperor's. 

Ever  since  Sylvia  had  made  friends  with  Jimmy  Monk- 
ley,  her  father  had  adopted  the  attitude  of  being  left  out 
in  the  cold,  which  made  him  the  worst  kind  of  audience  for 
an  enthusiastic  account  of  the  reception.  Mrs.  Meares, 
though  obviously  condescending,  was  a  more  satisfactory 
listener,  and  she  was  able  to  explain  to  Sylvia  some  of  the 
things  that  had  puzzled  her,  among  others  the  old  gentle- 
man's remark  about  Gaelic. 

"This  keeping  up  of  old  customs  and  ceremonies  in  our 
degenerate  days  is  most  commendable,"  said  Mrs.  Meares. 
"I  wish  I  could  be  doing  more  in  that  line  here,  but  Lillie 


50  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Road  does  not  lend  itself  to  the  antique  and  picturesque; 
Mr.  Morgan,  too,  gets  so  impatient  even  if  Clara  only  hums 
at  her  work  that  I  don't  like  to  ask  that  Scotchman  to  come 
and  play  his  bagpipes  here,  though  I  dare  say  he  should  be 
only  too  glad  to  do  so  for  a  shilling.  No,  my  dear  boy,  I 
don't  mean  the  gentleman  you  met  at  the  Emperor's. 
There  is  a  poor  man  who  plays  in  the  street  round  here 
from  time  to  time  and  dances  a  sword  dance.  But  the 
English  have  no  idea  of  beauty  or  freedom.  I  remember 
last  time  I  saw  him  the  poor  man  was  being  moved  on  for 
obstructing  the  traffic." 

Clara  put  forward  a  theory  that  the  reception  had  been 
a  church  treat.  There  had  been  a  similar  affair  in  her  own 
parish  once,  in  which  the  leading  scholars  of  the  Sunday- 
school  classes  had  portrayed  the  kings  and  queens  of 
England.  She  herself  had  been  one  of  the  little  princes 
who  were  smothered  in  the  Tower,  and  had  worn  a  pair  of 
her  mother's  stockings.  There  had  been  trouble,  she 
remembered,  because  the  other  little  prince  had  been 
laced  up  so  tightly  that  he  was  sick  over  the  pillow  that 
was  wanted  to  stuff  out  the  boy  who  was  representing 
Henry  VIII  and  could  not  be  used  at  the  last  moment. 

Sylvia  assured  her  that  nothing  like  this  had  taken  place 
at  the  Emperor's,  but  Clara  remained  unconvinced. 

A  week  or  two  passed.  The  reception  was  almost  for- 
gotten, when  one  day  Sylvia  found  the  dark-complexioned 
young  man  with  whom  Monkley  had  made  friends  talking 
earnestly  to  him  and  her  father. 

"You  understand,"  he  was  saying.  "I  wouldn't  do  this 
if  I  didn't  require  money  for  my  work.  You  must  not 
look  upon  me  as  a  pretender.  I  really  am  the  only  surviv- 
ing descendant  in  the  direct  line  of  the  famous  Prince  de 
Conde." 

"Of  course,"  Monkley  answered.  "I  know  you're 
genuine  enough.  All  you've  got  to  do  is  to  back —  Well, 
here  he  is,"  he  added,  turning  round  and  pointing  to 
Sylvia. 

"I  don't  think  Sil  looks  much  like  a  king,"  Henry  said, 
pensively.  "Though  I'm  bound  to  say  the  only  one  I  ever 
saw  in  real  life  was  Leopold  of  Belgium." 

Sylvia  began  to  think  that  Clara  had  been  right,  after  all. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  51 

"What  about  the  present  King  of  Spain,  then?"  Monk- 
ley  asked.  "He  isn't  much  more  than  nine  years  old,  if 
he's  as  much.  You  don't  suppose  he  looks  like  a  king,  do 
you?  On  the  Spanish  stamps  he  looks  more  like  an  ad- 
vertisement for  Mellin's  food  than  anything  else." 

"Naturally  the  de  jure  King  of  Spain,  who  until  the 
present  has  been  considered  to  be  Don  Carlos,  is  also  the 
de  jure  King  of  France,"  said  the  Prince  de  Conde. 

"Don't  you  start  any  of  your  games  with  kings  of 
France,"  Henry  advised.  "I  know  the  French  well  and 
they  won't  stand  it.  What  does  he  want  to  be  king  of  two 
places  for?  I  should  have  thought  Spain  was  enough  for 
anybody." 

"The  divine  right  of  monarchs  is  something  greater 
than  mere  geography,"  the  Prince  answered,  scornfully. 

"All  right.  Have  it  your  own  way.  You're  the  author- 
ity here  on  kings.  But  don't  overdo  it.  That's  all  I 
advise,"  Henry  said,  finally.  "I  know  everybody  thinks 
I'm  wrong  nowadays,"  he  added,  with  a  glance  at  Monkley 
and  Sylvia.  "But  what  about  Condy's  Fluid?" 

"What  about  it?"  Monkley  asked.  "What  do  you  want 
Condy's  for?" 

"I  don't  want  it,"  said  Henry.  "I  simply  passed  the 
remark.  Our  friend  here  is  the  Prince  de  Conde.  Well, 
I  merely  remark  'What  about  Condy's  Fluid?'  I  don't 
want  to  start  an  argument,  because,  as  I  said,  I'm  always 
wrong  nowadays,  but  I  think  if  he  wanted  to  be  a  prince 
he  ought  to  have  chosen  a  more  recherche  title,  not  gone 
routing  about  among  patent  medicines." 

The  Prince  de  Conde  looked  inquiringly  at  Monkley. 

"Don't  you  bother  about  him,  old  chap.  He's  gone  off 
at  the  deep  end." 

"I  knew  it,"  Henry  said.  "I  knew  I  should  be 
wrong.  That's  right,  laugh  away,"  he  added,  bitterly, 
to  Sylvia. 

There  followed  a  long  explanation  by  the  prince  of 
Sylvia's  royal  descent,  which  she  could  not  understand  at 
all.  Monkley,  however,  seemed  to  be  understanding  it 
very  well,  so  well  that  her  father  gave  up  being  offended 
and  loudly  expressed  his  admiration  for  Jimmy's  grip  of  the 
subject. 


52  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Now,"  said  Monkley,  "the  question  is  who  are  we 
going  to  touch  ?" 

The  prince  asked  if  he  had  noticed  at  the  reception  a 
young  man,  a  rather  good-looking,  fair  young  man  with  a 
white  rose  in  his  buttonhole.  Monkley  said  that  most  of 
the  young  men  he  had  seen  in  Stanmore  Crescent  would 
answer  to  that  description,  and  the  prince  gave  up  trying 
to  describe  him  except  as  the  only  son  of  a  wealthy  and 
distinguished  painter — Sir  Francis  Hurndale.  It  seemed 
that  young  Godfrey  Hurndale  could  always  command  the 
paternal  purse;  and  the  prince  suggested  that  a  letter 
should  be  sent  to  his  father  from  the  secretary  of  the  de 
jure  King  of  Spain  and  France,  offering  him  the  post  of 
court  painter  on  his  accession.  Monkley  objected  that  a 
man  who  had  made  money  out  of  painting  would  not  be 
taken  in  by  so  transparent  a  fraud  as  that;  and  the  prince 
explained  that  Sir  Francis  would  only  be  amused,  but  that 
he  would  certainly  pass  the  letter  on  to  his  son,  who  was  an 
enthusiastic  Legitimist;  that  the  son  would  consult  him, 
the  Prince  de  Conde;  and  that  afterward  it  lay  with 
Monkley  to  make  the  most  of  the  situation,  bearing  in 
mind  that  he,  the  prince,  required  a  fair  share  of  the 
profits  in  order  to  advance  his  great  propaganda  for  a 
universal  Platonic  system  of  government. 

"At  present,"  the  prince  proclaimed,  becoming  more 
and  more  sacerdotal  as  he  spoke  of  his  scheme — "at 
present  I  am  a  lay  member  of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  which 
represents  the  Platonic  tendency  in  modern  thought.  I 
am  vowed  to  exterminate  republicanism,  anarchy,  social- 
ism, and  to  maintain  the  conservative  instincts  of  human- 
ity against — " 

"Well,  nobody's  going  to  quarrel  with  you  about  spend- 
ing your  own  money,"  Monkley  interrupted. 

"He  can  give  it  to  the  Salvation  Army  if  he  likes," 
Henry  agreed. 

The  discussion  of  the  more  practical  aspects  of  the  plan 
went  on  for  several  days.  Ultimately  it  was  decided  to 
leave  Lillie  Road  as  a  first  step  and  take  a  small  house  in  a 
suburb;  to  Sylvia's  great  delight,  for  she  was  tired  of  the 
mustiness  of  Lillie  Road,  they  moved  to  Rosemary  Avenue, 
Streatham.  It  was  a  newly  built  house  and  it  was  all  their 


Sylvia    Scarlett  53 

own,  with  the  Common  at  one  end  of  the  road,  and,  better 
still,  a  back  garden.  Sylvia  had  never  lived  where  she  had 
been  able  to  walk  out  of  her  own  door  to  her  own  patch  of 
green;  moreover  she  thoroughly  enjoyed  the  game  of 
being  an  exiled  king  that  might  be  kidnapped  by  his  foes 
at  any  moment.  To  be  sure,  there  were  disadvantages; 
for  instance,  she  was  not  allowed  to  cultivate  an  ac- 
quaintanceship with  the  two  freckled  girls  next  door  on 
their  right,  nor  with  the  boy  who  had  an  air-gun  on  their 
left;  but  generally  the  game  was  amusing,  especially  when 
her  father  became  the  faithful  old  French  servant,  who  had 
guarded  her  all  these  years,  until  Mr.  James  Monkley,  the 
enthusiastic  American  amateur  of  genealogy,  had  dis- 
covered the  little  king  hidden  away  in  the  old  servant's 
cottage.  Henry  objected  to  being  ordered  about  by  his 
own  daughter,  but  his  objections  were  overruled  by  Jimmy, 
and  Sylvia  gave  him  no  rest. 

"That  damned  Conde  says  he's  a  lay  Jesuit,"  Henry 
grumbled.  "But  what  am  I?  A  lay  figure.  I  suppose 
you  wouldn't  like  me  to  sleep  in  a  kennel  in  the  back 
yard?"  he  asked.  "Another  thing  I  can't  understand  is 
why  on  earth  you  had  to  be  an  American,  Jimmy." 

Monkley  told  Henry  of  his  sudden  impulse  to  be  an 
American  at  the  Emperor's  reception. 

"Never  give  way  to  impulse,"  Henry  said.  "You're 
not  a  bit  like  an  American.  You'll  get  a  nasty  growth  in 
your  nose  or  strain  it  or  something.  Americans  may  talk 
through  the  nose  a  bit;  but  you  make  a  noise  like  a  cat 
that's  had  its  tail  shut  in  a  door.  It's  like  living  in  a  Punch 
and  Judy  show.  It  may  not  damage  your  nose,  but  it's 
very  bad  for  my  ears,  old  man.  It's  all  very  fine  for  me  to 
be  a  French  servant.  I  can  speak  French;  though  I  don't 
look  like  the  servant  part  of  it.  But  you  can't  speak 
American,  and  if  you  go  on  trying  much  harder  you  very 
soon  won't  be  able  to  speak  any  language  at  all.  I  noticed 
to-day,  when  you  started  talking  to  the  furniture  fellow, 
he  looked  very  uneasy.  I  think  he  thought  he  was  sitting 
on  a  concertina." 

"Anyway,  he  cleared  off"  without  getting  this  month's 
instalment,"  Monkley  said. 

"Oh,  it's  a  very  good  voice  to  have  when  there  are  duns 


54  Sylvia    Scarlett 

kicking  around,"  Henry  said.  "Or  in  a  crowded  railway 
carriage.  But  as  a  voice  to  live  with,  it's  rotten.  How- 
ever, don't  listen  to  me.  My  advice  doesn't  count  now- 
adays. Only,"  and  Henry  paused  impressively,  "when 
people  advise  you  to  try  linseed  oil  for  your  boots  as  soon 
as  you  start  talking  to  them,  then  don't  say  I  didn't 
warn  you." 

Notwithstanding  Henry's  pessimism,  Monkley  con- 
tinued to  practise  his  American;  day  by  day  the  task  of 
imposing  Sylvia  on  the  world  as  the  King  of  Spain  and 
France  was  being  carefully  prepared,  too  carefully,  it 
seemed  to  Sylvia,  for  so  much  talk  beforehand  was  be- 
coming tiresome.  The  long  delay  was  chiefly  due  to 
Henry's  inability  to  keep  in  his  head  the  numerous  genea- 
logical facts  that'were  crammed  down  his  throat  by  the 
Prince  de  Conde. 

"I  never  was  any  good  at  history  even  when  I  was  a 
boy,"  Henry  protested.  "Never.  And  I  was  never  good 
at  working  out  cousins  and  aunts.  I  know  I  had  two  aunts, 
and  hated  them  both." 

At  last  Henry's  facts  were  considered  firmly  enough  im- 
planted to  justify  a  move;  and  in  September  the  prince 
and  Monkley  sat  down  to  compose  their  preliminary  letter 
to  Sir  Francis  Hurndale.  Sylvia  by  now  was  so  much 
accustomed  to  the  behavior  of  her  companions  that  she 
never  thought  seriously  about  the  fantastic  side  of  the 
affair.  Her  own  masquerade  as  a  boy  had  been  passed  off 
so  successfully  even  upon  such  an  acute  observer  as 
Jimmy,  until  her  father  had  let  out  the  secret  by  a  slip  of 
the  tongue,  that  she  had  no  qualms  about  being  accepted 
as  a  king.  She  realized  that  money  was  to  be  made  out 
of  it;  but  the  absence  of  money  had  already  come  to  seem  a 
temporary  discomfort,  to  relieve  which  people  in  a  position 
like  her  own  and  her  father's  had  no  reason  to  bescrupulous. 
Not  that  she  really  ever  bothered  her  head  with  the 
morality  of  financial  ways  and  means.  When  she  spent  the 
ten-franc  piece  that  she  thought  she  had  found,  the 
wrong  had  lain  in  unwittingly  depriving  her  mother  whom 
she  loved;  if  she  had  not  loved  her  mother  she  might  have 
still  had  scruples  about  stealing  from  her;  but  stealing 
from  people  who  had  plenty  of  money  and  with  whom  there 


Sylvia    Scarlett  55 

was  no  binding  link  of  affection  would  have  been  quite 
incomprehensible  to  her.  Therefore  the  sight  of  Jimmy 
Monkley  and  her  father  and  the  Prince  de  Conde  sitting 
round  a  spindle-legged  tea-table  in  this  new  house  that 
smelled  pleasantly  of  varnish  was  merely  something  in  a 
day's  work  of  the  life  they  were  leading,  like  a  game  of 
cards.  It  was  a  much  jollier  life  than  any  she  had  yet 
known;  her  alliance  with  Jimmy  had  been  a  very  good 
move;  her  father  was  treated  as  he  ought  to  be  treated 
by  being  kept  under;  she  was  shortly  going  to  have  some 
more  clothes. 

Sylvia  sat  watching  the  trio,  thinking  how  much  more 
vividly  present  Jimmy  seemed  to  be  than  either  of  the 
other  two — the  prince  with  his  greenish  complexion  never 
really  well  shaved,  and  his  turn-down  collars  that  made  his 
black  suit  more  melancholy,  or  her  father  with  his  light, 
plaintive  eyes  and  big  ears.  She  was  glad  that  she  was  not 
going  to  resemble  her  father  except  perhaps  in  being  short 
and  in  the  shape  of  her  wide  nose;  yet  she  was  not  really 
very  short;  it  was  only  that  her  mother  had  been  so  tall; 
perhaps,  too,  when  her  hair  grew  long  again  her  nose 
would  not  seem  so  wide. 

The  letter  was  finished  and  Jimmy  was  reading  it  aloud: 

SIR, — I  have  the  honor  to  ask  if,  in  the  probable  event  of  a  great 
dynastic  change  taking  place  in  one  of  the  chief  countries  of  Europe,  you 
would  welcome  the  post  of  court  painter,  naturally  at  a  suitable  remunera- 
tion. If  you  read  the  daily  papers,  as  no  doubt  you  do,  you  will  cer- 
tainly have  come  to  the  conclusion  that  neither  the  present  ruling  house 
nor  what  is  known  as  the  Carlist  party  had  any  real  hold  upon  the 
affections  of  the  Spanish  people.  Verb.  sap.  Interesting  changes  may 
be  foreshadowed,  of  which  I  am  not  yet  at  liberty  to  write  more  fully. 
Should  you  entertain  the  proposal  I  shall  be  happy  to  wait  upon  you 
with  further  particulars. 

I  have  the  honor  to  be,  sir, 

Your  obedient  servant, 

JOSEPHE-ERNESTE, 

PRINCE  DE  CONDE. 

"Do  you  know  what  it  sounds  like?"  said  Henry. 
"Mind  I'm  not  saying  this  because  I  didn't  write  the 
letter  myself.  It  sounds  to  me  like  a  cross  between  a 
prophecy  in  Old  Moore's  Almanack  and  somebody  trying 
\o  sell  a  patent  knife-cleaner," 


56  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"There's  a  good  deal  in  what  you  say,"  Monkley  agreed, 
in  rather  a  dissatisfied  tone. 

Henry  was  so  much  flattered  by  the  reception  of  his 
criticism  that  he  became  compassionate  to  the  faults  of  the 
letter  and  tried  hard  to  point  out  some  of  its  merits. 

"After  all,"  said  Jimmy,  "the  great  thing  is  that  the 
prince  has  signed  it.  If  his  name  doesn't  draw  Master 
Godfrey,  no  letters  are  going  to.  We'll  send  it  off  as 
it  is." 

So  the  letter  was  sent.  Two  days  afterward  the  prince 
arrived  with  the  news  that  Godfrey  Hurndale  had  called 
upon  him  and  that  he  had  been  inexpressibly  happy  at  the 
prospect  of  meeting  the  de  jure  King  of  France  and  Spain. 

"Bring  him  round  to-morrow  afternoon  about  tea- 
time,"  said  Monkley.  "You  haven't  forgotten  the  family 
history,  Henry?" 

Henry  said  that  he  had  not  forgotten  a  single  relation, 
and  that  he  damned  them  severally  each  morning  in  all 
their  titles  while  he  was  dressing. 

The  next  afternoon  Sylvia  sat  in  an  arm-chair  in  the 
presence-room,  which  Henry  supposed  was  so  called  be- 
cause none  of  the  furniture  had  been  paid  for,  and  waited 
for  Godfrey  Hurndale's  coming.  Her  father  put  on  the 
rusty  black  evening-dress  of  the  family  retainer,  and 
Jimmy  wore  a  most  conspicuous  check  suit  and  talked  so 
loudly  and  nasally  that  Henry  was  driven  to  a  final 
protest: 

"Look  here,  Jimmy,  I've  dressed  up  to  help  this  show 
in  a  suit  that's  as  old  as  one  of  those  infernal  ancestors  of 
Sil's,  but  if  you  don't  get  less  American  it  '11  fall  to  pieces. 
Every  time  you  guess  I  can  hear  a  seam  give." 

"Remember  to  talk  nothing  but  French,"  Monkley 
warned  Sylvia, when  the  bell  rang.  "  Go  on,  Harry.  You've 
got  to  open  the  door.  And  don't  forget  that  you  can  only 
speak  French." 

Monkley  followed  him  out  of  the  room,  and  his  voice 
could  be  heard  clanking  about  the  hall  as  he  invited  young 
Hurndale  into  the  dining-room  first.  Henry  came  back 
and  took  up  his  position  behind  Sylvia's  chair;  she  felt 
very  solemn  and  excited,  and  asked  her  father  rather 
irritably  why  he  was  muttering.  The  reason,  however, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  57 

remained  a  mystery,  for  the  dining-room  door  opened 
again  and,  heralded  by  Monkley' s  twanging  invitation, 
Mr.  Hurndale  stood  shyly  in  the  entrance  to  the  presence- 
room. 

"Go  right  in,  Mr.  Hurndale,"  Monkley  said.  "I  guess 
his  Majesty's  just  about  ready  to  meet  you." 

Sylvia,  when  she  saw  the  young  man  bowing  before  her, 
really  felt  a  kind  of  royal  exaltation  and  held  out  her  hand 
to  be  kissed. 

Hurndale  reverently  bent  over  it  and  touched  it  with  his 
lips;  so  did  the  prince,  an  action  for  which  Sylvia  was  un- 
prepared and  which  she  rather  resented,  thinking  to  herself 
that  he  really  did  not  shave  and  that  it  had  not  only  been 
his  grubby  appearance.  Then  Hurndale  offered  her  a 
large  bunch  of  white  carnations  and  she  became  kingly 
again. 

"Francois"  she  commanded  her  father,  "mets  ces  ceillets 
dans  ma  chambre" 

And  when  her  father  passed  out  with  a  bow  Sylvia  was 
indeed  a  king.  The  audience  did  not  last  long.  There  were 
practical  matters  to  discuss,  for  which  his  Majesty  was 
begged  to  excuse  their  withdrawal.  Sylvia  would  have 
liked  a  longer  ceremony.  When  the  visitor  had  gone  they 
all  sat  down  to  a  big  tea  in  the  presence-room,  and  she  was 
told  that  the  young  man  had  been  so  completely  conquered 
by  her  gracious  reception  of  him  that  he  had  promised  to 
raise  five  hundred  pounds  for  her  cause.  His  reward  in 
addition  to  royal  favors  was  to  be  a  high  class  of  the  Order 
of  Isabella  the  Catholic.  Everybody,  even  Henry,  was 
in  high  good  humor.  The  prince  did  not  come  to  Streat- 
ham  again;  but  a  week  later  Monkley  got  a  letter  from 
him  with  the  Paris  postmark. 


DEAR  MR.  MONKLEY, — Our  young  friend  handed  me  a  check  for  £200 
the  day  before  yesterday.  As  he  seemed  uncertain  about  the  remainder 
of  the  sum  promised,  I  took  the  liberty  of  drawing  my  share  at  once. 
My  great  work  requires  immediate  assistance,  and  I  am  now  busily 
occupied  in  Paris.  My  next  address  will  be  a  castle  in  Spain,  where 
perhaps  we  shall  meet  when  you  are  looking  for  your  next  site. 
Most  truly  yours, 

JOSEPHE-ERNESTE, 

PRINCE  DE  CONDE. 


58  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Jimmy  and  Henry  stared  at  each  other. 

"I  knew  it,"  said  Henry.  "I'm  always  wrong;  but  I 
knew  it.  Still,  if  I  could  catch  him,  it  would  take  more 
than  Condy's  Fluid  to  disinfect  that  pea-green  welsher 
after  I'd  done  with  him." 

Monkley  sat  biting  his  lips  in  silence;  and  Sylvia,  recog- 
nizing the  expression  in  his  eyes  that  she  dreaded  formerly, 
notwithstanding  that  he  was  now  her  best  friend,  felt 
sharply  her  old  repugnance  for  him.  Henry  was  still 
abusing  the  defaulter  when  Monkley  cut  him  short. 

"Shut  up.    I  rather  admire  him." 

"Admire  him?"  Henry  gasped.  "I  suppose  you'd 
admire  the  hangman  and  shake  hands  with  him  on  the 
scaffold.  It's  all  very  fine  for  you.  You  didn't  have  to 
learn  how  Ferdinand  the  Fifty-eighth  married  Isabella  the 
Innocent,  daughter  of  Alphonso  the  Eighth,  commonly 
called  Alphonso  the  Anxious.  Condy's  Fluid !  I  swallowed 
enough  of  it,  I  can  tell  you." 

Monkley  told  him  gruffly  to  keep  quiet;  then  he  sat 
down  and  began  to  write,  still  with  that  expression  in 
his  eyes.  Presently  he  tore  up  the  letter  and  paced  the 
room. 

"Damn  that  swine,"  he  suddenly  shouted,  kicking  the 
spindle-legged  table  into  the  fireplace.  "We  wanted  the 
money,  you  know.  We  wanted  the  money  badly." 

Shortly  before  dawn  the  three  of  them  abandoned  the 
new  house  in  Streatham  and  occupied  rooms  in  the  Ken- 
nington  Park  Road.  Monkley  and  Sylvia's  father  resumed 
the  racing  that  had  temporarily  been  interrupted  by 
ambition.  Sylvia  wandered  about  the  streets  in  a  suit  of 
Etons  that  was  rapidly  showing  signs  of  wear. 

One  day  early  in  the  new  year  Sylvia  was  leaning  over 
the  parapet  of  Waterloo  Bridge  and  munching  hot  chest- 
nuts. The  warmth  of  them  in  her  pockets  was  grateful. 
Her  pastime  of  dropping  the  shells  into  the  river  did  not 
lack  interest;  she  was  vaguely  conscious  in  the  frosty  sun- 
shine of  life's  bounty,  and  she  offered  to  the  future  a  wel- 
come from  the  depths  of  her  being;  meanwhile  there  still 
remained  forty  chestnuts  to  be  eaten. 

Her  meditation  was  interrupted  by  a  voice  from  a  passer- 
by who  had  detached  himself  from  the  stream  of  traffic 


Sylvia    Scarlett  59 

that  she  had  been  disregarding  in  her  pensive  greed;  she 
looked  up  and  met  the  glance  of  a  pleasant  middle-aged 
gentleman  in  a  dark-gray  coat  with  collar  and  cuffs  of 
chinchilla,  who  was  evidently  anxious  to  begin  a  conver- 
sation. 

"You're  out  of  school  early,"  he  observed. 

Sylvia  replied  that  she  did  not  go  to  school. 

"Private  tutor?"  he  asked;  and,  partly  to  save  further 
questions  about  her  education,  partly  because  she  was  not 
quite  sure  what  a  private  tutor  was,  she  answered  in  the 
affirmative. 

The  stranger  looked  along  the  parapet  inquisitively. 

"I'm  out  alone  this  afternoon,"  Sylvia  said,  quickly. 

The  stranger  asked  her  what  amused  her  most,  museums 
or  theaters  or  listening  to  bands,  and  whether  she  pre- 
ferred games  or  country  walks.  Sylvia  would  have  liked  to 
tell  him  that  she  preferred  eating  chestnuts  to  anything 
else  on  earth  at  that  moment;  but,  being  unwilling  to 
create  an  impression  of  trying  to  snub  such  a  benevolent 
person,  she  replied  vaguely  that  she  did  not  know  what  she 
liked  best.  Then  because  such  an  answer  seemed  to  imply 
a  lack  of  intelligence  that  she  did  not  wish  to  impute  to 
herself,  she  informed  him  that  she  liked  looking  at  people, 
which  was  strictly  true,  for  if  she  had  not  been  eating 
chestnuts  she  would  certainly  have  still  been  contemplating 
the  traffic  across  the  bridge. 

"I'll  show  you  some  interesting  people,  if  you  care  to 
come  with  me,"  the  stranger  proposed.  "Have  you  any- 
thing to  do  this  afternoon?" 

Sylvia  admitted  that  her  time  was  unoccupied. 

"Come  along,  then,"  said  the  middle-aged  gentleman,  a 
little  fussily,  she  thought,  and  forthwith  he  hailed  a  pass- 
ing hansom.  Sylvia  had  for  a  long  time  been  ambitious  to 
travel  in  a  hansom.  She  had  already  eaten  thirty-five 
chestnuts,  only  seven  of  which  had  been  bad;  she  decided 
to  accept  the  stranger's  invitation.  He  asked  her  where  she 
lived  and  promised  to  send  her  home  by  cab  when  the 
entertainment  was  over. 

Sylvia  asked  if  it  was  a  reception  to  which  he  was  taking 
her.  The  middle-aged  gentleman  laughed,  squeezed  her 
hand,  and  said  that  it  might  be  called  a  reception,  adding, 


60  Sylvia    Scarlett 

with  a  chuckle,  "a  very  warm  reception,  in  fact."  Sylvia 
did  not  understand  the  joke,  but  laughed  out  of  polite- 
ness. 

There  followed  an  exchange  of  names,  and  Sylvia  learnt 
that  her  new  acquaintance  was  called  Corydon. 

"You'll  excuse  me  from  offering  you  one  of  my  cards," 
he  said.  "I  haven't  one  with  me  this  afternoon." 

They  drove  along  for  some  time,  during  which  the  con- 
versation of  Mr.  Corydon  always  pursued  the  subject  of 
her  likes  and  dislikes.  They  drew  clear  of  the  press  of 
traffic  and  bowled  westward  toward  Sloane  Street;  Sylvia, 
recognizing  one  of  the  blue  West  Kensington  omnibuses, 
began  to  wonder  if  the  cab  would  take  her  past  Lillie  Road 
where  Jimmy  had  specially  forbidden  her  to  go,  because 
both  he  and  her  father  owed  several  weeks'  rent  to  Mrs. 
Meares  and  he  did  not  want  to  remind  her  of  their  exist- 
ence. When  they  drew  nearer  and  nearer  to  Sylvia's 
former  lodging  she  began  to  feel  rather  uneasy  and  wish 
that  the  cab  would  turn  down  a  side-street.  The  land- 
marks were  becoming  more  and  more  familiar,  and  Sylvia 
was  asking  herself  if  Mrs.  Meares  had  employed  the 
stranger  to  kidnap  her  as  a  hostage  for  the  unpaid  rent, 
when  the  cab  turned  off  into  Redcliffe  Gardens  and  soon 
afterward  pulled  up  at  a  house. 

"Here  we  are,"  said  Mr.  Corydon.  "You'll  enjoy 
yourself  most  tremendously,  Sylvester." 

The  door  was  opened  by  a  servant,  who  was  apparently 
dressed  as  a  brigand,  which  puzzled  Sylvia  so  much  that 
she  asked  the  reason  in  a  whisper.  Mr.  Corydon  laughed. 

"He's  a  Venetian.  That's  the  costume  of  a  gondolier, 
my  dear  boy.  My  friend  who  is  giving  the  reception 
dresses  all  his  servants  like  gondoliers.  So  much  more 
picturesque  than  a  horrible  housemaid." 

Sylvia  regarded  this  exotic  Clara  with  considerable 
interest;  the  only  other  Venetian  product  of  which  she 
had  hitherto  been  aware  was  blinds. 

The  house,  which  smelt  strongly  of  incense  and  watered 
flowers,  awed  Sylvia  with  its  luxury,  and  she  began  to 
regret  having  put  foot  in  a  place  where  it  was  so  difficult  to 
know  on  what  she  was  intended  to  tread.  However,  since 
Mr.  Corydon  seemed  to  walk  everywhere  without  regard 


Sylvia    Scarlett  61 

for  the  softness  of  the  carpets,  Sylvia  made  up  her  mind  to 
brave  the  silent  criticism  of  the  gondolier  and  follow 
up-stairs  in  his  footsteps.  Mr.  Corydon  took  her  arm  and 
introduced  her  to  a  large  room  where  a  fume  of  cigarette 
smoke  and  incense  blurred  the  outlines  of  the  numerous 
guests  that  sat  about  in  listening  groups,  while  some  one 
played  the  grand  piano.  There  were  many  low  divans 
round  the  room,  to  one  of  which  Mr.  Corydon  guided 
Sylvia,  and  while  the  music  continued  she  had  an  oppor- 
tunity of  studying  her  fellow-guests.  They  were  mostly 
young  men  of  about  eighteen,  rather  like  the  young  men 
at  the  Emperor's  reception;  but  there  were  also  several 
middle-aged  men  of  the  same  type  as  Mr.  Corydon,  one  of 
whom  came  across  and  shook  hands  with  them  both  when 
the  music  stopped. 

"So  glad  you've  come  to  see  me,"  he  said  in  a  voice  that 
sounded  as  if  each  word  were  being  delicately  fried  upon 
his  tongue.  "Aren't  you  going  to  smoke  a  cigarette? 
These  are  Russian.  Aren't  they  beautiful  to  look  at  ?" 

He  proffered  a  green  cigarette-case.  Sylvia,  who  felt 
that  she  must  take  advantage  of  this  opportunity  to  learn 
something  about  a  sphere  of  life  which  was  new  to  her, 
asked  him  what  it  was  made  of. 

"Jade,  my  dear.  I  brought  such  heaps  of  beautiful  jade 
back  with  me  from  China.  I've  even  got  a  jade  toilet-set. 
My  dear,  it  was  dreadfully  expensive." 

He  giggled.  Sylvia,  blowing  clouds  of  smoke  from  her 
cigarette,  thought  dreamily  what  funny  things  her  father 
would  have  said  about  him. 

"Raymond's  going  to  dance  for  us,"  he  said,  turning  to 
Corydon.  "Isn't  it  too  sweet  of  him?" 

At  that  moment  somebody  leaped  into  the  middle  of  the 
room  with  a  wild  scream  and  began  to  throw  himself  into 
all  sorts  of  extraordinary  attitudes. 

"Oh,  Raymond,  you're  too  wonderful!"  the  host  ejacu- 
lated. "You  make  me  feel  quite  Bacchic." 

Sylvia  was  not  surprised  that  anybody  should  feel 
"backache"  (she  had  thus  understood  her  host)  in  the 
presence  of  such  contortions.  The  screaming  Raymond 
was  followed  into  the  arena  by  another  lightly  clad  and 
equally  shrill  youth  called  Sydney,  and  both  of  them  flung 


62  Sylvia    Scarlett 

themselves  into  a  choric  frenzy,  chasing  each  other  round 
and  round,  sawing  the  air  with  their  legs,  and  tearing  roses 
from  their  hair  to  fling  at  the  guests,  who  flung  them  back 
at  the  dancers.  Suddenly  Raymond  collapsed  upon  the 
carpet  and  began  to  moan. 

"What's  the  matter,  my  dear?"  cried  the  host,  rushing 
forward  and  kneeling  to  support  the  apparently  agonized 
youth  in  his  arms. 

"Oh,  my  foot!"  Raymond  wailed.  "I've  trodden  on 
something." 

"He's  trodden  on  a  thorn.  He's  trodden  on  a  thorn," 
everybody  said  at  once. 

Raymond  was  borne  tenderly  to  a  divan,  and  was  so 
much  petted  that  Sydney  became  jealous  and  began  to 
dance  again,  this  time  on  the  top  of  the  piano.  Presently 
everybody  else  began  to  dance,  and  Mr.  Corydon  would 
have  liked  to  dance  with  Sylvia;  but  she  declined.  Gondo- 
liers entered  with  trays  of  liqueurs,  and  Sylvia,  tasting 
creme  de  menthe  for  the  first  time,  found  it  so  good  that 
she  drank  four  glasses,  which  made  her  feel  rather  drowsy. 
New  guests  were  continually  arriving,  to  whom  she  did  not 
pay  much  attention  until  suddenly  she  recognized  the 
baron  with  Godfrey  Hurndale,  who  at  the  same  moment 
recognized  her.  The  baron  rushed  forward  and  seized 
Sylvia's  arm.  She  thought  he  was  going  to  drag  her  back 
by  force  to  Mrs.  Meares  to  answer  for  the  missing  rent, 
but  he  began  to  arch  his  unoccupied  arm  like  an  excited 
swan,  and  call  out  in  his  high,  mincing  voice: 

"Blackmailers-s-s!  blackmailers-s-s!" 

"They  blackmailed  me  out  of  four  hundred  pounds," 
said  Hurndale. 

"Who  brought  him  here?"  the  baron  cried.  "It's-s-s 
true.  Godfrey  has  been  persecuted  by  these  horrid  people. 
Blackmailers-s-s !" 

All  the  other  guests  gathered  round  Sylvia  and  behaved 
like  angry  women  trying  to  mount  an  omnibus.  Mr. 
Corydon  had  turned  very  pale  and  was  counting  his  visit- 
ing-cards. Sylvia  could  not  understand  the  reason  for  all 
this  noise;  but  vaguely  through  a  green  mist  of  creme  de 
menthe  she  understood  that  she  was  being  attacked  on  all 
sides  and  began  to  get  annoyed.  Somebody  pinched  her 


Sylvia    Scarlett  63 

arm,  and  without  waiting  to  see  who  it  was  she  hit  the 
nearest  person  within  reach,  who  happened  to  be  Mr. 
Corydon.  His  visiting-cards  fell  on  the  floor,  and  he 
groveled  on  the  carpet  trying  to  sweep  them  together. 
Sylvia  followed  her  attack  on  Mr.  Corydon  by  treading 
hard  on  Sydney's  bare  toes,  who  thereupon  slapped  her 
face;  presently  everybody  was  pushing  her  and  pinching 
her  and  hustling  her,  until  she  got  in  such  a  rage  and 
kicked  so  furiously  that  her  enemies  retired. 

"Who  brought  him  here?"  Godfrey  Hurndale  was 
demanding.  "I  tell  you  he  belongs  to  a  gang  of  black- 
mailers." 

"Most  dreadful  people,"  the  baron  echoed. 

"Antonio!    Domenico!"  the  host  cried. 

Two  gondoliers  entered  the  room,  and  at  a  word  from 
their  master  they  seized  Sylvia  and  pushed  her  out  into  the 
street,  flinging  her  coat  and  cap  after  her.  By  this  time  she 
was  in  a  blind  fury,  and,  snatching  the  bag  of  chestnuts 
from  her  pocket,  she  flung  it  with  all  her  force  at  the 
nearest  window  and  knew  the  divine  relief  of  starring  the 
pane. 

An  old  lady  that  was  passing  stopped  and  held  up  her 
hands. 

"You  wicked  young  rascal,  I  shall  tell  the  policeman  of 
you,"  she  gasped,  and  began  to  belabor  Sylvia  with  her 
umbrella. 

Such  unwarrantable  interference  was  not  to  be  tolerated; 
Sylvia  pushed  the  old  lady  so  hard  that  she  sat  down 
heavily  in  the  gutter.  Nobody  else  was  in  sight,  and  she 
ran  as  fast  as  she  could  until  she  found  an  omnibus,  in 
which  she  traveled  to  Waterloo  Bridge.  There  she  bought 
fifty  more  chestnuts  and  walked  slowly  back  to  Kennington 
Park  Road,  vainly  trying  to  find  an  explanation  of  the 
afternoon's  adventure. 

Her  father  and  Monkley  were  not  back  when  Sylvia 
reached  home,  and  she  sat  by  the  fire  in  the  twilight, 
munching  her  chestnuts  and  pondering  the  whole  ex- 
traordinary business.  When  the  others  came  in  she 
told  her  story,  and  Jimmy  looked  meaningly  at  her 
father. 

"Shows  how  careful  you  ought  to  be,"  he  said.    Then 


64  Sylvia    Scarlett 

turning  to  Sylvia,  he  asked  her  what  on  earth  she  thought 
she  was  doing  when  she  broke  the  window. 

"Suppose  you'd  been  collared  by  the  police,  you  little 
fool.  We  should  have  got  into  a  nice  mess,  thanks  to  you. 
Look  here,  in  future  you're  not  to  speak  to  people  in  the 
street.  Do  you  hear?" 

Sylvia  had  no  chestnuts  left  to  throw  at  Jimmy,  so  in  her 
rage  she  took  an  ornament  from  the  mantelpiece  and 
smashed  it  on  the  fender. 

"You've  got  the  breaking  mania,"  said  Henry.  "You'd 
better  spend  the  next  money  you've  got  on  cocoanuts 
instead  of  chestnuts." 

"Oh,  ta  gueule!    I'm  not  going  to  be  a  boy  any  longer." 


CHAPTER  III 

WHILE  her  hair  was  growing  long  again  Sylvia 
developed  a  taste  for  reading.  She  had  nothing 
else  to  do,  for  it  was  not  to  be  supposed  that  with  her  head 
cropped  close  she  could  show  herself  to  the  world  in  petti- 
coats. Her  refusal  any  longer  to  wear  male  attire  gave 
Monkley  and  her  father  an  excuse  to  make  one  of  their 
hurried  moves  from  Kennington  Park  Road,  where  by 
this  time  they  owed  enough  money  to  justify  the  trouble 
of  evading  payment.  Henry  had  for  some  time  expressed 
a  desire  to  be  more  central;  and  a  partially  furnished  top 
floor  was  found  in  Fitzroy  Street,  or,  as  the  landlord  pre- 
ferred to  call  it,  a  self-contained  and  well-appointed  flat. 
The  top  floor  had  certainly  been  separated  from  the  rest 
of  the  house  by  a  wooden  partition  and  a  door  of  its  own, 
which  possibly  justified  the  first  half  of  the  description, 
but  the  good  appointments  were  limited  to  a  bath  that 
looked  like  an  old  palette,  and  a  geyser  that  was  not  always 
safe  according  to  Mrs.  Bullwinkle,  a  decrepit  charwoman, 
left  behind  by  the  last  tenants,  together  with  some  under- 
linen  and  two  jars  containing  a  morbid  growth  that  may 
formerly  have  been  pickles. 

"How  d'ye  mean,  not  safe?"  Henry  asked.  "Is  it 
liable  to  blow  up?" 

"It  went  off  with  a  big  bang  last  April  and  hasn't  been 
lit  since,"  the  charwoman  said.  "But  perhaps  it  '11  be  all 
right  now.  The  worst  of  it  is  I  never  can  remember  which 
tap  you  put  the  match  to." 

"You  leave  it  alone,  old  lady,"  Henry  advised.  "No- 
body's likely  to  do  much  bathing  in  here;  from  what  I  can 
see  of  it  that  bath  gives  more  than  it  gets.  What  did  the 
last  people  use  it  for — growing  watercress  or  keeping 
chickens  ?" 

"It  was  a  very  nice  bath  once,"  the  charwoman  said. 


66  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  you've  ever  tried  it?  Go  on! 
You're  mixing  it  up  with  the  font  in  which  you  were 
baptized.  There's  never  been  any  water  in  this  bath  since 
the  flood." 

Nevertheless,  however  inadequately  appointed,  the  new 
abode  had  one  great  advantage  over  any  other  they  had 
known,  which  was  a  large  raftered  garret  with  windows  at 
either  end  that  ran  the  whole  depth  of  the  house.  The 
windows  at  the  back  opened  on  a  limitless  expanse  of  roofs 
and  chimneys,  those  in  front  looked  across  to  a  dancing- 
academy  on  the  top  floor  but  one  of  the  house  opposite,  a 
view  that  gave  perpetual  pleasure  to  Sylvia  during  the  long 
period  of  her  seclusion. 

Now  that  Sylvia  had  become  herself  again,  her  father 
and  Monkley  insisted  upon  her  doing  the  housework, 
which,  as  Henry  reminded  her,  she  was  perfectly  able  to 
do  on  account  of  the  excellent  training  she  had  received  in 
that  respect  from  her  mother.  Sylvia  perceived  the  logic 
of  this  and  made  no  attempt  to  contest  it;  though  she 
stipulated  that  Mrs.  Bullwinkle  should  not  be  considered 
to  be  helping  her. 

"We  don't  want  her,"  Henry  protested,  indignantly. 

"Well,  tell  her  not  to  come  any  more,"  Sylvia  said. 

"I've  shoved  her  away  once  or  twice,"  said  Henry. 
"  But  I  expect  the  people  here  before  us  used  to  give  her  a 
saucer  of  milk  sometimes.  The  best  way  would  be  to  go 
out  one  afternoon  and  tell  her  to  light  the  geyser.  Then 
perhaps  when  we  came  back  she'd  be  gone  for  good." 

Nevertheless,  Mrs.  Bullwinkle  was  of  some  service  to 
Sylvia,  for  one  day,  when  she  was  sadly  washing  down  the 
main  staircase  of  the  house,  she  looked  up  from  her  handi- 
work and  asked  Sylvia,  who  was  passing  at  the  moment,  if 
she  would  like  some  books  to  read,  inviting  her  down-stairs 
to  take  her  choice. 

"Mr.  Bullwinkle  used  to  be  a  big  reader,"  the  char- 
woman said.  "A  very  big  reader.  A  very  big  reader 
indeed  he  used  to  be,  did  Mr.  Bullwinkle.  In  those  days  he 
was  caretaker  at  a  Congregational  chapel  in  Gospel  Oak, 
and  he  used  to  say  that  reading  took  his  mind  oflF  of  religion 
a  bit.  Otherwise  he'd  have  gone  mad  before  he  did,  which 
was  shortly  after  he  left  the  chapel  through  an  argument 


Sylvia    Scarlett  67 

he  had  with  Pastor  Phillips,  who  wrote  his  name  in  the 
dust  on  the  reading-desk,  which  upset  my  old  man,  be- 
cause he  thought  it  wasn't  all  a  straightforward  way  of 
telling  him  that  his  services  wasn't  considered  satisfactory. 
Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Bullwinkle,  with  a  stertorous  sniff,  "he 
died  in  Bedlam,  did  my  old  man.  He  had  a  very  queer 
mania;  he  thought  he  was  inside  out,  and  it  preyed  on  his 
mind.  He  wouldn't  never  have  been  shut  up  at  all  if  he 
hadn't  of  always  been  undressing  himself  in  the  street  and 
putting  on  his  trousers  inside  out  to  suit  his  complaint. 
They  had  to  feed  him  with  a  chube  in  the  end,  because  he 
would  have  it  his  mouth  couldn't  be  got  at  through  him 
being  inside  out.  Queer  fancies  some  people  has,  don't 
they?  Oh,  well,  if  we  was  all  the  same,  it  would  be  a  dull 
world  I  suppose." 

Sylvia  sat  up  in  the  big  garret  and  read  through  one  after 
another  of  the  late  Mr.  Bullwinkle's  tattered  and  hetero- 
geneous collection.  She  did  not  understand  all  she  read; 
but  there  were  few  books  that  did  not  give  her  on  one  page 
a  vivid  impression,  which  she  used  to  elaborate  with  her 
imagination  into  something  that  was  really  a  more  sub- 
stantial experience  than  the  book  itself.  The  days  grew 
longer  and  more  sunny,  and  Sylvia  dreamed  them  away, 
reading  and  thinking  and  watching  from  her  window  the 
little  girls  pirouette  in  the  shadowy  room  opposite.  Her 
hair  was  quite  long  now,  a  warm  brown  with  many 
glinting  strands. 

In  the  summer  Jimmy  and  Henry  made  a  good  deal  of 
money  by  selling  a  number  of  tickets  for  a  non-existent 
stand  in  one  of  the  best  positions  on  the  route  of  the 
Diamond  Jubilee  procession;  indeed  they  felt  prosperous 
enough  to  buy  for  themselves  and  Sylvia  seats  in  a  genuine 
stand.  Sylvia  enjoyed  the  pageant,  which  seemed  more 
like  something  out  of  a  book  than  anything  in  real  life. 
She  took  advantage  of  the  temporary  prosperity  to  ask  for 
money  to  buy  herself  new  clothes. 

"Can't  you  see  other  people  dressed  up  without  wanting 
to  go  and  do  the  same  yourself?"  Henry  asked.  "What's 
the  matter  with  the  frock  you've  got  on?" 

However,  she  talked  to  Monkley  about  it  and  had  her 
own  way.  When  she  had  new  clothes,  she  used  to  walk 


68  Sylvia    Scarlett 

about  the  streets  again,  but,  though  she  was  often  accosted, 
she  would  never  talk  to  anybody.  Yet  it  was  a  dull  life, 
really,  and  once  she  brought  up  the  subject  of  getting 
work. 

"Work!"  her  father  exclaimed,  in  horror.  "Good 
heavens!  what  will  you  think  of  next?  First  it's  clothes. 
Now  it's  work.  Ah,  my  dear  girl,  you  ought  to  have  had 
to  slave  for  your  living  as  I  had;  you  wouldn't  talk  about 
work." 

"Well,  can  I  have  a  piano  and  learn  to  play?"  Sylvia 
asked. 

"Perhaps  you'd  like  the  band  of  the  Grenadier  Guards 
to  come  and  serenade  you  in  your  bedroom  while  you're 
dressing?"  Henry  suggested. 

"Why  shouldn't  she  have  a  piano?"  Monkley  asked. 
"I'll  teach  her  to  play.  Besides,  I'd  like  a  piano  my- 
self." 

So  the  piano  was  obtained.  Sylvia  learned  to  play,  and 
even  to  sing  a  little  with  her  deep  voice;  and  another 
regular  caller  for  money  was  added  to  the  already  long  list. 

In  the  autumn  Sylvia's  father  fell  in  love,  and  brought  a 
woman  to  live  in  what  was  henceforth  always  called  the 
flat,  even  by  Henry,  who  had  hitherto  generally  referred  to 
it  as  The  Hammam. 

In  Sylvia's  opinion  the  advent  of  Mabel  Bannerman  had 
a  most  vitiating  effect  upon  life  in  Fitzroy  Street.  Her 
father  began  to  deteriorate  immediately.  His  return  to 
England  and  the  unsurveyed  life  he  had  been  leading  for 
nearly  two  years  had  produced  an  expansion  of  his  person- 
ality in  every  direction.  He  had  lost  the  shiftless  insignifi- 
cance that  had  been  his  chief  characteristic  in  France,  and 
though  he  was  still  weak  and  lacking  in  any  kind  of  initia- 
tive, he  had  acquired  a  quaintness  of  outlook  and  faculty 
for  expressing  it  which  disguised  his  radical  futility  under  a 
veil  of  humor.  He  was  always  dominated  by  Monkley  in 
practical  matters  where  subordination  was  reasonable  and 
beneficial,  but  he  had  been  allowed  to  preserve  his  own 
point  of  view,  that  with  the  progress  of  time  had  even 
come  to  be  regarded  as  important.  When  Sylvia  was 
much  younger  she  had  always  criticized  her  father's  be- 
havior; but,  like  everybody  else,  she  had  accepted  her 


Sylvia    Scarlett  69 

mother's  leadership  of  the  house  and  family  as  natural  and 
inevitable,  and  had  regarded  her  father  as  a  kind  of  spoiled 
elder  brother  whose  character  was  fundamentally  worth- 
less and  whose  relation  to  her  mother  was  the  only  one 
imaginable.  Now  that  Sylvia  was  older,  she  did  not  merely 
despise  her  father's  weakness;  she  resented  the  shameful 
position  which  he  occupied  in  relation  to  this  intruder. 
Mabel  Bannerman  belonged  to  that  full-blown  intensely 
feminine  type  that  by  sheer  excess  of  femininity  imposes 
itself  upon  a  weak  man,  smothering  him,  as  it  were,  with 
her  emotions  and  her  lace,  and  destroying  by  sensuality 
every  trait  of  manhood  that  does  not  directly  contribute  to 
the  justification  of  herself.  Within  a  week  or  two  Henry 
stood  for  no  more  in  the  Fitzroy  Street  house  than  a  dog 
that  is  alternately  patted  and  scolded,  that  licks  the  hand 
of  its  mistress  more  abjectly  for  each  new  brutality,  and 
that  asks  as  its  supreme  reward  permission  to  fawn  upon 
her  lap.  Sylvia  hated  Mabel  Bannerman;  she  hated  her 
peroxide  hair,  she  hated  her  full,  moist  lips,  she  hated  her 
rounded  back  and  her  shining  finger-nails  spotted  with 
white,  she  hated  with  a  hatred  so  deep  as  to  be  forever  in- 
communicable each  blowsy  charm  that  went  to  make  up 
what  was  called  "a  fine  woman";  she  hated  her  inability 
ever  to  speak  the  truth;  she  hated  the  way  she  looked  at 
Monkley,  who  should  have  been  nothing  to  her;  she  hated 
the  sight  of  her  drinking  tea  in  the  morning;  she  hated  the 
smell  of  her  wardrobe  and  the  pink  ribbons  which  she  tied 
to  every  projection  in  her  bedroom;  she  hated  her  affecta- 
tion of  babyishness;  she  hated  the  way  she  would  make 
Henry  give  money  to  beggars  for  the  gratification  of  an 
impulsive  and  merely  sensual  generosity  of  her  own;  she 
hated  her  embedded  garters  and  smooth  legs. 

"O  God,"  Sylvia  cried  aloud  to  herself  once,  when  she 
was  leaning  out  of  the  window  and  looking  down  into 
Fitzroy  Street,  "O  God,  if  I  could  only  throw  her  into 
the  street  and  see  her  eaten  by  dogs." 

Monkley  hated  her  too;  that  was  some  consolation. 
Now  often,  when  he  was  ready  for  an  expedition,  Henry 
would  be  unable  to  accompany  him,  because  Mabel  was 
rather  seedy  that  morning;  or  because  Mabel  wanted  him 
to  go  out  with  her;  or  because  Mabel  complained  of  being 


70  Sylvia    Scarlett 

left  alone  so  much.  Monkley  used  to  look  at  him  with  a 
savage  contempt;  and  Sylvia  used  to  pray  sometimes  that 
he  would  get  angry  enough  to  rush  into  Mabel's  room  and 
pound  her,  where  she  lay  so  softly  in  her  soft  bed. 

Mabel  used  to  bring  her  friends  to  the  flat  to  cheer  her 
up,  as  she  used  to  say,  and  when  she  had  rilled  the  room  she 
had  chosen  as  her  sitting-room  (the  garret  was  not  cozy 
enough  for  Mabel)  with  a  scented  mob  of  chattering 
women,  she  would  fix  upon  one  of  them  as  the  object  of 
her  jealousy,  accusing  Henry  of  having  looked  at  her  all  the 
evening.  There  would  sometimes  be  a  scene  at  the  moment 
when  half  the  mob  would  cluster  around  Mabel  to  console 
her  outraged  feelings  and  the  rest  of  it  would  hover  about 
her  rival  to  assure  her  she  was  guiltless.  Sylvia,  standing 
sullenly  apart,  would  ponder  the  result  of  throwing  a 
lighted  lamp  into  the  middle  of  the  sickly  sobbing  pande- 
monium. The  quarrel  was  not  so  bad  as  the  inevitable 
reconciliation  afterward,  with  its  profuse  kissing  and 
interminable  explanations  that  seemed  like  an  orchestra 
from  which  Mabel  emerged  with  a  plaintive  solo  that  was 
the  signal  for  the  whole  scene  to  be  lived  over  again  in 
maddeningly  reiterated  accounts  from  all  the  women  talk- 
ing at  once.  Worse  even  than  such  evenings  were  those 
when  Mabel  restrained,  or  rather  luxuriously  hoarded  up, 
her  jealousy  until  the  last  visitor  had  departed;  for  then 
through  half  the  night  Sylvia  must  listen  to  her  pouring 
over  Henry  a  stream  of  reproaches  which  he  would  weakly 
try  to  divert  by  arguments  or  more  weakly  try  to  dam  with 
caresses.  Such  methods  of  treatment  usually  ended  in 
Mabel's  dressing  herself  and  rushing  from  the  bedroom  to 
leave  the  flat  forever.  Unfortunately  she  never  carried  out 
her  threat. 

"Why  don't  you  go?"  Sylvia  once  asked,  when  Mabel 
was  standing  by  the  door,  fully  dressed,  with  heaving 
breast,  making  no  effort  to  turn  the  handle. 

"These  shoes  hurt  me,"  said  Mabel.  "He  knows  I  can't 
go  out  in  these  shoes.  The  heartless  brute!" 

"If  you  knew  those  shoes  hurt,  why  did  you  put  them 
on?"  Sylvia  asked,  scornfully. 

"I  was  too  much  upset  by  Harry's  treatment  of  me. 
Oh,  whatever  shall  I  do?  I'm  so  miserable." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  71 

Whereupon  Mabel  collapsed  upon  the  mat  and  wept 
black  tears,  until  Henry  came  and  tried  to  lift  her  up, 
begging  her  not  to  stay  where  she  might  catch  cold. 

"You  know  when  a  jelly  won't  set?"  Sylvia  said,  when 
she  was  recounting  the  scene  to  Monkley  afterward. 
"Well,  she  was  just  like  a  jelly  and  father  simply  couldn't 
make  her  stand  up  on  the  plate." 

Jimmy  laughed  sardonically. 

These  continued  altercations  between  Mabel  and  Henry 
led  to  altercations  with  their  neighbors  underneath,  who 
complained  of  being  kept  awake  at  night.  The  landlord,  a 
fiery  little  Jew,  told  them  that  what  between  the  arrears  of 
rent  and  the  nuisance  they  were  causing  to  his  other 
tenants  he  would  have  to  give  them  notice.  Sylvia  could 
never  get  any  money  for  the  purposes  of  housekeeping 
except  from  Jimmy,  and  when  she  wanted  clothes  it  was 
always  Jimmy  whom  she  must  ask. 

"Let's  go  away,"  she  said  to  him  one  day.  "Let's  leave 
them  here  together." 

Monkley  looked  at  her  in  surprise. 

"Do  you  mean  that?" 

"Of  course  I  mean  it." 

"  But  if  we  left  Harry  with  her  he'd  starve  and  she'd 
leave  him  in  a  week." 

"Let  him  starve,"  Sylvia  cried.  "He  deserves  to 
starve." 

"You  hard-hearted  little  devil,"  Monkley  said.  "After 
all,  he  is  your  father." 

"That's  what  makes  me  hate  him,"  Sylvia  declared. 
"He's  no  right  to  be  my  father.  He's  no  right  to  make 
me  think  like  that  of  him.  He  must  be  wrong  to  make  me 
feel  as  I  do  about  him." 

Monkley  came  close  and  took  her  hand.  "Do  you  mean 
what  you  said  about  leaving  them  and  going  away  with 
me?" 

Sylvia  looked  at  him,  and,  meeting  his  eyes,  she  shook 
her  head.  "No,  of  course  I  don't  really  mean  it,  but  why 
can't  you  think  of  some  way  to  stop  all  this?  Why  should 
we  put  up  with  it  any  longer?  Make  him  turn  her  out  into 
the  street." 

Monkley  laughed,     "You  are  very  young,  aren't  you? 


72  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Though  I've  thought  once  or  twice  lately  that  you  seemed 
to  be  growing  up." 

Again  Sylvia  caught  his  eyes  and  felt  a  little  afraid,  not 
really  afraid,  she  said  to  herself,  but  uneasy,  as  if  somebody 
she  could  not  see  had  suddenly  opened  a  door  behind 
her. 

"Don't  let's  talk  about  me,  anyway,"  she  said.  "Think 
of  something  to  change  things  here." 

"I'd  thought  of  a  concert-party  this  summer.  Pierrots, 
you  know.  How  d'ye  think  your  father  would  do  as  a 
pierrot?  He  might  be  very  funny  if  she'd  let  him  be 
funny." 

Sylvia  clapped  her  hands.  "Oh,  Jimmy,  it  would  be 
such  fun!" 

"You  wouldn't  mind  if  she  came  too?" 

"I'd  rather  she  didn't,"  Sylvia  said.  "But  it  would  be 
different,  somehow.  We  shouldn't  be  shut  up  with  her  as 
we  are  here.  I'll  be  able  to  sing,  won't  I  ?" 

"That  was  my  idea." 

Before  Henry  met  Mabel  he  would  have  had  a  great  deal 
to  say  about  this  concert-party;  nowhe  accepted  Monkley's 
announcement  with  a  dull  equanimity  that  settled  Sylvia. 
He  received  the  news  that  he  would  become  a  pierrot  just 
as  he  had  received  the  news  that,  his  nightgown  not  having 
been  sent  back  that  week  by  the  laundress,  he  would  have 
to  continue  with  the  one  he  was  wearing. 

Early  summer  passed  away  quickly  enough  in  constant 
rehearsals.  Sylvia  was  pleased  to  find  that  she  had  been 
right  in  supposing  that  the  state  of  domestic  affairs  would 
be  improved  by  Jimmy's  plan.  Mabel  turned  out  to  be  a 
good  singer  for  the  kind  of  performance  they  were  going 
to  give,  and  the  amount  of  emotion  she  put  into  her  songs 
left  her  with  less  to  work  off  on  Henry,  who  recovered  some 
of  his  old  self  and  was  often  really  funny,  especially  in  his 
duologues  with  Monkley.  Sylvia  picked  out  for  herself  and 
learned  a  few  songs,  most  of  which  were  condemned  as  un- 
suitable by  Jimmy.  The  one  that  she  liked  best  and  in  her 
own  opinion  sang  best  was  the  "Raggle  Taggle  Gipsies," 
though  the  others  all  prophesied  for  it  certain  failure. 
Monkley  himself  played  all  the  accompaniments  and  by  his 
personality  kept  the  whole  show  together;  he  also  sang  a 


Sylvia    Scarlett  73 

few  songs,  which,  although  he  had  practically  no  voice, 
were  given  with  such  point  that  Sylvia  felt  convinced  that 
his  share  in  the  performance  would  be  the  most  popular 
of  the  lot.  Shortly  before  they  were  to  start  on  tour,  which 
was  fixed  for  the  beginning  of  July,  Monkley  decided  that 
they  wanted  another  man  who  could  really  sing,  and  a 
young  tenor  known  as  Claude  Raglan  was  invited  to  join 
the  party.  He  was  a  good-looking  youth,  much  in  earnest, 
and  with  a  tendency  toward  consumption,  of  which  he 
was  very  proud. 

"Though  what  there  is  to  be  proud  of  in  losing  one  of 
your  lungs  I  don't  know.  I  might  as  well  be  proud  because 
I  lost  a  glove  the  other  day." 

Henry  was  severe  upon  Claude  Raglan  from  the  begin- 
ning. Perhaps  he  suspected  him  of  admiring  Mabel.  There 
was  often  much  tension  at  rehearsals  on  account  of  Henry's 
attitude;  once,  for  instance,  when  Claude  Raglan  had 
sung  "Little  Dolly  Daydreams"  with  his  usual  romantic 
fervor,  Henry  took  a  new  song  from  his  pocket  and,  having 
planted  it  down  with  a  defiant  snap  on  the  music-stand, 
proceeded  to  sing: 

"I'll  give  him  Dolly  Daydreams 
Down  where  the  poppies  grow; 
I'll  give  him  Dolly  Daydreams, 

The  pride  of  Idaho. 
And  if  I  catch  him  kissing  her 
There's  sure  to  be  some  strife, 

Because  if  he's  got  anything  he  wants  to  give  away, 
Let  him  come  and  give  it  to  his  wife." 

The  tenor  declared  that  Henry's  song,  which  was  in  the 
nature  of  a  derogatory  comment  upon  his  own,  could  only 
have  the  effect  of  spoiling  the  more  serious  contribution. 

"What  of  it?"  Henry  asked,  truculently. 

"It  seems  to  me  perfectly  obvious,"  Claude  said,  with  an 
effort  to  restrain  his  annoyance. 

"I  consider  that  it  won't  hurt  your  song  at  all,"  Henry 
declared.  "In  fact,  I  think  it  will  improve  it.  In  my 
opinion  it  will  have  a  much  greater  success  than  yours.  In 
fact,  I  may  as  well  say  straight  out  that  if  it  weren't  for  my 
song  I  don't  believe  the  audience  would  let  you  sing  yours 


74  Sylvia    Scarlett 

more  than  once.  "Cos  no  one's  gwine  ter  kiss  dat  gal  but 
me!"'  he  went  on,  mimicking  the  indignant  Claude. 
"No  wonder  you've  got  consumption  coming  on!  And 
the  audience  will  notice  there's  something  wrong  with 
you,  and  start  clearing  out  to  avoid  infection.  That's 
where  my  song  will  come  in.  My  song  will  be  a  tonic. 
Now  don't  start  breathing  at  me,  or  you'll  puncture  the 
other  lung.  Let's  try  that  last  verse  over  again,  Jimmy." 

In  the  end,  after  a  long  discussion,  during  which  Mabel 
introduced  the  most  irrelevant  arguments,  Monkley  de- 
cided that  both  songs  should  be  sung,  but  with  a  long 
enough  interval  between  them  to  secure  Claude  against  the 
least  impression  that  he  was  being  laughed  at. 

At  last  the  company,  which  called  itself  The  Pink 
Pierrots,  was  ready  to  start  for  the  South  Coast.  It  took 
Monkley  all  his  ingenuity  to  get  out  of  London  without 
paying  for  the  dresses  or  the  properties,  but  it  was  managed 
somehow;  and  at  the  beginning  of  July  they  pitched  a 
small  tent  on  the  beach  at  Hastings.  There  were  many 
rival  companies,  some  of  which  possessed  the  most  elabo- 
rate equipment,  almost  a  small  theater  with  railed-off  seats 
and  a  large  piano;  but  Sylvia  envied  none  of  these  its 
grandeur.  She  thought  that  none  was  so  tastefully  dressed 
as  themselves,  that  there  was  no  leader  so  sure  of  keeping 
the  attention  of  an  audience  as  Jimmy  was,  that  no  tenor 
could  bring  tears  to  the  eyes  of  the  young  women  on  the 
Marina  as  Claude  could,  that  no  voice  could  be  heard 
farther  off  than  Mabel's,  and  that  no  comedian  could  so 
quickly  gain  the  sympathy  of  that  large  but  unprofitable 
portion  of  an  audience — the  small  boys — as  her  father  could. 

Sylvia  enjoyed  every  moment  of  the  day  from  the  time 
they  left  their  lodgings,  pushing  before  them  the  portable 
piano  in  the  morning  sunshine,  to  the  journey  home  after 
the  last  performance,  which  was  given  in  a  circle  of  rosy 
lantern-light  within  sound  of  the  sea.  They  worked  so 
hard  that  there  was  no  time  for  quarreling  except  with 
competitors  upon  whose  preserves  they  had  trespassed. 
Mabel  was  so  bent  upon  fascinating  the  various  patrons, 
and  Henry  was  so  obviously  a  success  only  with  the  un- 
sentimental small  boys,  that  she  never  once  accused  him  of 
making  eyes  even  at  a  nursemaid.  Sylvia  was  given  a  duet 


Sylvia    Scarlett  75 

with  Claude  Raglan,  and,  whether  it  was  that  she  was 
conscious  of  being  envied  by  many  of  the  girls  in  the 
audience  or  whether  the  sentimental  tune  influenced  her 
imagination,  she  was  certainly  aware  of  a  faint  thrill  of 
pleasure — a  hardly  perceptible  quickening  of  the  heart — 
every  time  that  Claude  took  her  in  his  arms  to  sing  the  last 
verse.  After  they  had  sung  together  for  a  week,  Jimmy 
said  the  number  was  a  failure  and  abolished  it,  which 
Sylvia  thought  was  very  unfair,  because  it  had  always  been 
well  applauded. 

She  grumbled  to  Claude  about  their  deprivation,  while 
they  were  toiling  home  to  dinner  (they  were  at  Bourne- 
mouth now,  and  the  weather  was  extremely  hot),  and  he 
declared  in  a  tragical  voice  that  people  were  always  jealous 
of  him. 

"It's  the  curse  of  being  an  artist,"  he  announced. 
"Everywhere  I  go  I  meet  with  nothing  but  jealousy.  I 
can't  help  having  a  good  voice.  I'm  not  conceited  about 
it.  I  can't  help  the  girls  sending  me  chocolates  and  asking 
me  to  sign  the  post-cards  of  me  which  they  buy.  I'm  not 
conceited  about  that,  either.  There's  something  about  my 
personality  that  appeals  to  women.  Perhaps  it's  my  deli- 
cate look.  I  don't  suppose  I  shall  live  very  long,  and  I 
think  that  makes  women  sorry  for  me.  They're  quicker  to 
see  these  things  than  men.  I  know  Harry  thinks  I'm  as 
healthy  as  a  beefsteak.  I'm  positive  I  coughed  up  some 
blood  this  morning,  and  when  I  told  Harry  he  asked  me 
with  a  sneer  if  I'd  cleaned  my  teeth.  You're  not  a  bit  like 
your  dad,  Sylvia.  There's  something  awfully  sympathetic 
about  you,  little  girl.  I'm  sorry  Jimmy's  cut  out  our 
number.  He's  a  jolly  good  manager  and  all  that,  but  he 
does  not  like  anybody  else  to  make  a  hit.  Have  you 
noticed  that  lately  he's  taken  to  gagging  during  my  songs? 
Luckily  I'm  not  at  all  easy  to  dry  up." 

Sylvia  wondered  why  anybody  like  Jimmy  should  bother 
to  be  jealous  of  Claude.  He  was  pleasant  enough,  of  course, 
and  he  had  a  pretty,  girlish  mouth  and  looked  very  slim 
and  attractive  in  his  pierrot's  dress;  but  nobody  could  take 
him  seriously  except  the  stupid  girls  who  bought  his  photo- 
graph and  sighed  over  it,  when  they  brushed  their  hair  in 
the  morning. 


76  Sylvia    Scarlett 

The  weather  grew  hotter  and  the  hard  work  m  *de  them 
all  irritable;  when  they  got  home  for  dinner  at  midday 
it  was  impossible  to  eat,  and  they  used  to  loll  about  in  the 
stuffy  sitting-room,  which  the  five  of  them  shared  in  com- 
mon, while  the  flies  buzzed  everywhere.  It  was  never 
worth  while  to  remove  the  make-up;  so  all  their  faces  used 
to  get  mottled  with  pale  streaks  of  perspiration,  the  rouge 
on  their  lips  would  cake,  and  their  ruffles  hung  limp  and 
wet,  stained  round  the  neck  with  dirty  carmine.  Sylvia 
lost  all  enjoyment  in  the  tour,  and  used  to  lie  on  the  horse- 
hair sofa  that  pricked  her  cheeks,  watching  distastefully  the 
cold  mutton,  the  dull  knives,  and  the  spotted  cloth,  and  the 
stewed  fruit  over  which  lay  a  faint  silvery  film  of  staleness. 
Round  the  room  her  fellow-mountebanks  were  still  seated 
on  the  chairs  into  which  they  had  first  collapsed  when  they 
reached  the  lodgings,  motionless,  like  great  painted  dolls. 

The  weather  grew  hotter.  The  men,  particularly  Henry, 
took  to  drinking  brandy  at  every  opportunity;  toward  the 
end  of  their  stay  in  Bournemouth  the  quarrels  between 
him  and  Mabel  broke  out  again,  but  with  a  difference, 
because  now  it  was  Henry  who  was  the  aggressor.  He  had 
never  objected  to  Mabel's  admirers  hitherto,  had,  indeed, 
been  rather  proud  of  their  existence  in  a  fatuous  way  and 
derived  from  their  numbers  a  showman's  satisfaction. 
When  it  was  her  turn  to  take  round  the  hat,  he  used  to 
smirk  over  the  quantity  of  post-cards  she  sold  of  herself 
and  call  everybody's  attention  to  her  capricious  autog- 
raphy that  was  so  successful  with  the  callow  following. 
Then  suddenly  one  day  he  made  an  angry  protest  against 
the  admiration  which  an  older  man  began  to  accord  her,  a 
pretentious  sort  of  man  with  a  diamond  ring  and  yellow 
cummerbund,  who  used  to  stand  with  his  straw  hat  atilt 
and  wink  at  Mabel,  tugging  at  his  big  drooping  mustache 
and  jingling  the  money  in  his  pockets. 

Everybody  told  Henry  not  to  be  foolish;  he  only  sulked 
and  began  to  drink  more  brandy  than  ever.  The  day  after 
Henry's  outbreak,  the  Pink  Pierrots  moved  to  Swanage, 
where  their  only  rivals  were  a  troupe  of  niggers,  upon 
whom  Henry  was  able  to  loose  some  of  his  spleen  in  a 
dispute  that  took  place  over  the  new-comers'  right  to  plant 
their  pink  tent  where  they  did. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  77 

"This  isn't  Africa,  you  know,"  Henry  said.  "This  is 
Swanage.  It's  no  good  your  waving  your  banjo  at  me.  I 
know  it's  a  banjo,  all  right,  though  I  may  forget,  next  time 
I  hear  you  play  it." 

"We've  been  here  every  year  for  the  last  ten  years,"  the 
chief  nigger  shouted. 

"I  thought  so  by  your  songs,"  Henry  retorted.  "If 
you  told  me  you  got  wrecked  here  with  Christopher 
Columbus  I  shouldn't  have  contradicted  you." 

"This  part  of  the  beach  belongs  to  us,"  the  niggers 
proclaimed. 

"I  suppose  you  bought  it  off  Noah,  didn't  you,  when  he 
let  you  out  of  the  ark?"  said  Henry. 

In  the  end,  however,  the  two  companies  adjusted  their 
differences  and  removed  themselves  out  of  each  other's 
hearing.  Mabel's  voice  defeated  even  the  tambourines 
and  bones  of  the  niggers.  Swanage  seemed  likely  to  be  an 
improvement  upon  Bournemouth,  until  one  day  Mabel's 
prosperous  admirer  appeared  on  the  promenade  and 
Henry's  jealousy  rose  to  fury. 

"Don't  you  tell  me  you  didn't  tell  him  to  follow  you 
here,"  he  said,  "because  I  don't  believe  you.  I  saw  you 
smile  at  him." 

Monkley  remonstrated  with  Mabel,  when  Henry  had 
gone  off  in  a  fever  of  rage  to  his  room,  but  she  seemed 
to  be  getting  a  certain  amount  of  pleasure  from  the 
situation. 

"You  must  cut  it  out,"  Monkley  said.  "I  don't  want 
the  party  broken  up  on  account  of  you  and  Henry.  I  tell 
you  he  really  is  upset.  What  the  deuce  do  you  want  to 
drag  in  all  this  confounded  love  business  now  for?  Leave 
that  to  Claude.  It  '11  burst  up  the  show,  and  it's  making 
Harry  drink,  which  his  head  can't  stand." 

Mabel  looked  at  herself  in  the  glass  over  the  fireplace 
and  patted  her  hair  complacently.  "I'm  rather  glad  to  see 
Harry  can  get  jealous.  After  all,  it's  always  a  pleasure  to 
think  some  one's  really  fond  of  you." 

Sylvia  watched  Mabel  very  carefully  and  perceived  that 
she  actually  was  carrying  on  a  flirtation  with  the  man  who 
had  followed  her  from  Bournemouth.  She  hoped  that  it 
would  continue  and  that  her  father  would  get  angry 


78  Sylvia    Scarlett 

enough  with  Mabel  to  get  rid  of  her  when  the  tour  came 
to  an  end. 

One  Saturday  afternoon,  when  Mabel  was  collecting, 
Sylvia  distinctly  saw  her  admirer  drop  a  note  into  the  hat, 
which  she  took  with  her  into  the  tent  to  read  and  tore  up; 
during  her  next  song  Sylvia  noticed  that  the  man  with  the 
yellow  cummerbund  was  watching  her  with  raised  eye- 
brows, and  that,  when  Mabel  smiled  and  nodded,  he  gently 
clapped  his  hands  and  went  away. 

Sylvia  debated  with  herself  the  advisability  of  telling  her 
father  at  once  what  she  had  seen,  thus  bringing  things  to  an 
immediate  climax  and  getting  rid  of  Mabel  forever,  even 
if  by  doing  so  the  show  were  spoilt.  But  when  she  saw  his 
glazed  eyes  and  realized  how  drunk  he  was,  she  thought  she 
would  wait.  The  next  afternoon,  when  Henry  was  taking 
his  Sunday  rest,  Mabel  dressed  herself  and  went  out. 
Sylvia  followed  her  and,  after  ascertaining  that  she  had 
taken  the  path  toward  the  cliffs  to  the  east  of  the  town, 
came  back  to  the  lodgings  and  again  debated  with  herself  a 
course  of  action.  She  decided  in  the  end  to  wait  a  little 
longer  before  she  denounced  Mabel.  Later  on,  when  her 
father  had  wakened  and  was  demanding  Mabel's  company 
for  a  stroll  in  the  moonlight,  a  letter  was  brought  to  the 
lodgings  by  a  railway  porter  from  Mabel  herself  to  say  that 
she  had  left  the  company  and  had  gone  away  with  her  new 
friend  by  train.  Sylvia  thought  how  near  she  had  been  to 
spoiling  the  elopement  and  hugged  herself  with  pleasure; 
but  she  could  not  resist  telling  her  father  now  that  she  had 
seen  the  intrigue  in  progress  and  of  her  following  Mabel 
that  afternoon  and  seeing  her  take  the  path  toward  the 
cliffs.  Henry  seemed  quite  shattered  by  his  loss,  and  could 
do  nothing  but  drink  brandy,  while  Monkley  swore  at 
Mabel  for  wrecking  a  good  show  and  wondered  where  he 
was  going  to  find  another  girl,  even  going  so  far  as  to 
suggest  telegraphing  on  the  off  chance  to  Maudie  Tilt. 

It  was  very  hot  on  Monday,  and  after  the  morning 
performance  Henry  announced  that  he  did  not  intend  to 
walk  all  the  way  back  to  the  lodgings  for  dinner.  He 
should  go  to  the  hotel  and  have  a  snack.  What  did  it 
matter  about  his  being  in  his  pierrot's  rig?  Swanage  was  a 
small  place,  and  if  the  people  were  not  used  to  his  costume 


Sylvia    Scarlett  79 

by  now,  they  never  would  be.  It  was  no  good  any  one 
arguing;  he  intended  to  stay  behind  this  morning.  The 
others  left  him  talking  in  his  usual  style  of  melancholy 
humor  to  the  small  boy  who  for  the  sum  of  twopence 
kept  an  eye  on  the  portable  piano  and  the  book  of 
songs  during  the  hot  midday  hours.  When  they  looked 
round  he  was  juggling  with  one  of  the  pennies,  to  the 
admiration  of  the  owner.  They  never  saw  him  alive 
again.  He  was  brought  back  dead  that  evening  on  a 
stretcher,  his  pink  costume  splashed  with  blood.  The 
odd  thing  was  that  the  hotel  carving-knife  was  in  his 
pocket,  though  it  was  proved  conclusively  at  the  in- 
quest that  death  was  due  to  falling  over  the  cliffs  on 
the  east  side  of  the  town. 

Sylvia  wondered  if  she  ought  to  blame  herself  for  her 
father's  death,  and  she  confided  in  Jimmy  what  she  had 
told  him  about  Mabel's  behavior.  Jimmy  asked  her  why 
she  could  not  have  let  things  alone,  and  made  her  very 
miserable  by  his  strictures  upon  her  youthful  tactlessness; 
so  miserable,  indeed,  that  he  was  fain  to  console  her  and 
assure  her  that  it  had  all  been  an  accident  due  to  Henry's 
fondness  for  brandy — that  and  the  sun  must  have  turned 
his  head. 

"You  don't  think  he  took  the  knife  to  kill  himself?"  she 
asked. 

"More  likely  he  took  it  with  some  idea  of  killing 
them,  and,  being  drunk,  fell  over  the  cliff.  Poor  old 
Harry!  I  shall  miss  him,  and  now  you're  all  alone  in 
the  world." 

That  was  true,  and  the  sudden  realization  of  this  fact 
drove  out  of  Sylvia's  mind  the  remorse  for  her  father's 
death  by  confronting  her  with  the  instancy  of  the  great 
problem  that  had  for  so  long  haunted  her  mind.  She 
turned  to  Jimmy  almost  fearfully. 

"I  shall  have  you  to  look  after  me?" 

Jimmy  took  her  hand  and  gazed  into  her  eyes. 

"You  want  to  stay  with  me,  then?"  he  asked,  earnestly. 

"Of  course  I  do.    Who  else  could  I  stay  with?" 

"You  wouldn't  prefer  to  be  with  Claude,  for  example?" 
he  went  on. 

"Claude?"  she  repeated,  in  a  puzzled  voice.    And  then 


8o  Sylvia    Scarlett 

she  grasped  in  all  its  force  the  great  new  truth  that  for  the 
rest  of  her  life  the  choice  of  her  companions  lay  with  her- 
self alone.  She  had  become  at  this  moment  grown  up  and 
was  free,  like  Mabel,  to  choose  even  a  man  with  a  yellow 
cummerbund. 


CHAPTER  IV 

SYLVIA  begged  Monkley  not  to  go  back  and  live  in 
Fitzroy  Street.  She  felt  the  flat  would  be  haunted 
by  memories  of  her  father  and  Mabel.  It  was  as  well 
that  she  did  not  want  to  return  there,  for  Jimmy  assured 
her  that  nothing  would  induce  him  to  go  near  Fitzroy 
Street.  A  great  deal  of  money  was  owing,  and  he  wished 
the  landlord  luck  in  his  dispute  with  the  furnishing  people 
when  he  tried  to  seize  the  furniture  for  arrears  of  rent.  It 
would  be  necessary  to  choose  for  their  next  abode  a 
quarter  of  London  to  which  he  was  a  stranger,  because 
he  disliked  having  to  make  detours  to  avoid  streets  where 
he  owed  money.  Finsbury  Park  was  melancholy;  High- 
gate  was  inaccessible;  Hampstead  was  expensive  and 
almost  equally  inaccessible;  but  they  must  go  somewhere 
in  the  North  of  London,  for  there  did  not  remain  a  suburb 
in  the  West  or  South  the  tradesmen  and  house-owners  of 
which  he  had  not  swindled  at  one  time  or  another.  On 
second  thoughts,  there  was  a  part  of  Hampstead  that  was 
neither  so  expensive  nor  so  inaccessible,  which  was  reached 
from  Haverstock  Hill;  they  would  look  for  rooms  there. 
They  settled  down  finally  in  one  of  a  row  of  old  houses 
facing  the  southerly  extremity  of  the  Heath,  the  rural 
aspect  of  which  was  heightened  by  long  gardens  in  front 
that  now  in  late  summer  were  filled  with  sunflowers  and 
hollyhocks.  The  old-fashioned  house,  which  resembled  a 
large  cottage  both  without  and  within,  belonged  to  a 
decayed  florist  and  nursery  gardener  called  Samuel  Gus- 
tard,  whose  trade  was  now  confined  to  the  sale  of  penny 
packets  of  seeds,  though  a  weather-beaten  sign-board 
facing  the  road  maintained  a  legend  of  greater  glories.  Mr. 
Gustard  himself  made  no  effort  to  live  up  to  his  sign- 
board; indeed,  he  would  not  even  stir  himself  to  produce  a 
packet  of  seeds,  for  if  his  wife  were  about  he  would  indicate 


82  Sylvia    Scarlett 

to  her  with  the  stem  of  his  pipe  which  packet  was  wanted, 
and  if  she  were  not  about,  he  would  tell  the  customer  that 
the  variety  was  no  longer  in  stock.  A  greenhouse  kept 
from  collapse  by  the  sturdy  vine  it  was  supposed  to  protect 
ran  along  the  fence  on  one  side  of  the  garden;  the  rest  was 
a  jungle  of  coarse  herbaceous  flowers,  presumably  the 
survivors  of  Mr.  Custard's  last  horticultural  effort,  about 
ten  years  ago. 

The  money  made  by  the  tour  of  the  Pink  Pierrots  did 
not  last  very  long,  and  Jimmy  was  soon  forced  back  to 
industry.  Sylvia  nowadays  heard  more  about  his  suc- 
cesses and  failures  than  when  her  father  was  alive,  and 
she  begged  very  hard  to  be  allowed  to  help  on  some  of 
his  expeditions. 

"You're  no  good  to  me  yet,"  Monkley  told  her. 
"You're  too  old  to  be  really  innocent  and  not  old  enough 
to  pretend  to  be.  Besides,  people  don't  take  school-girls  to 
race  meetings.  Later  on,  when  you've  learned  a  bit  more 
about  life,  we'll  start  a  gambling  club  in  the  West  End  and 
work  on  a  swell  scale  what  I  do  now  in  a  small  way  in 
railway-carriages." 

This  scheme  of  Jimmy's  became  a  favorite  topic;  and 
Sylvia  began  to  regard  a  flash  gambling-hell  as  the  crown  of 
human  ambition.  Jimmy's  imagination  used  to  run  riot 
amid  the  splendor  of  it  all,  as  he  discoursed  of  the  footmen 
with  plush  breeches;  of  the  shaded  lamps;  of  the  side- 
board loaded  with  hams  and  jellies  and  fruit  at  which  the 
guests  would  always  be  able  to  refresh  themselves,  for  it 
would  never  do  to  let  them  go  away  because  they  were 
hungry,  and  people  were  always  hungry  at  three  in  the 
morning;  of  the  smart  page-boy  in  the  entrance  of  the 
flats  who  would  know  how  to  reckon  up  a  visitor  and  give 
the  tip  up-stairs  by  ringing  a  bell;  and  of  the  rigid  exclu- 
sion of  all  women  except  Sylvia  herself. 

"I  can  see  it  all  before  me,"  Jimmy  used  to  sigh.  "I 
can  smell  the  cigars  and  whisky.  I'm  flinging  back  the 
curtains  when  every  one  has  gone  and  feeling  the  morning 
air.  And  here  we  are  stuck  in  this  old  cucumber-frame  at 
Hampstead!  But  we'll  get  it,  we'll  get  it.  I  shall  have  a 
scoop  one  of  these  days  and  be  able  to  start  saving,  and 
when  I've  saved  a  couple  of  hundred  I'll  bluff  the  rest," 


Sylvia    Scarlett  83 

In  October  Jimmy  came  home  from  Newmarket  and 
told  Sylvia  he  had  run  against  an  old  friend,  who  had 
proposed  a  money-making  scheme  which  would  take  him 
away  from  London  for  a  couple  of  months.  He  could  not 
explain  the  details  to  Sylvia,  but  he  might  say  that  it  was  a 
confidence  trick  on  the  grand  scale  and  that  it  meant  his 
residing  in  a  northern  city.  He  had  told  his  friend  he 
would  give  him  an  answer  to-morrow,  and  wanted  to  know 
what  Sylvia  thought  about  it. 

She  was  surprised  by  Jimmy's  consulting  her  in  this 
way.  She  had  always  taken  it  for  granted  that  from  time 
to  time  she  would  be  left  alone.  Jimmy's  action  made  her 
realize  more  clearly  than  ever  that  to  a  great  extent  she 
already  possessed  that  liberty  of  choice  the  prospect  of 
which  had  dawned  upon  her  at  Swanage. 

She  assured  Jimmy  of  her  readiness  to  be  left  alone  in 
Hampstead.  When  he  expatiated  on  his  consideration  for 
her  welfare  she  was  bored  and  longed  for  him  to  be  gone; 
his  solicitude  gave  her  a  feeling  of  restraint;  she  became 
impatient  of  his  continually  wanting  to  know  if  she  should 
miss  him  and  of  his  commendation  of  her  to  the  care  of 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Gustard,  from  whom  she  desired  no  inter- 
ference, being  quite  content  with  the  prospect  of  sitting  in 
her  window  with  a  book  and  a  green  view. 

The  next  morning  Monkley  left  Hampstead;  and  Sylvia 
inhaled  freedom  with  the  autumn  air.  She  had  been  given 
what  seemed  a  very  large  sum  of  money  to  sustain  herself 
until  Jimmy's  return.  She  had  bought  a  new  hat;  a  black 
kitten  had  adopted  her;  it  was  pearly  October  weather. 
Sylvia  surveyed  life  with  a  sense  of  pleasure  that  was  never- 
theless most  unreasonably  marred  by  a  faint  breath  of 
restlessness,  an  almost  imperceptible  discontent.  Life  had 
always  offered  itself  to  her  contemplation,  whether  of  the 
past  or  of  the  future,  as  a  set  of  vivid  impressions  that 
formed  a  crudely  colored  panorama  of  action  without  any 
emotional  light  and  shade,  the  intervals  between  which, 
like  the  intervals  of  a  theatrical  performance,  were  only 
tolerable  with  plenty  of  chocolates  to  eat.  At  the  present 
moment  she  had  plenty  of  chocolates  to  eat,  more,  in  fact, 
than  she  had  ever  had  before,  but  the  interval  was  seeming 
most  exasperatingly  long. 


84  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"You  ought  to  take  a  walk  on  the  Heath,"  Mr.  Gustard 
advised.  "  It  isn't  good  to  sit  about  all  day  doing  nothing." 

"You  don't  take  walks,"  Sylvia  pointed  out.  "And  you 
sit  about  all  day  doing  nothing.  I  do  read  a  book,  any- 
way." 

"I'm  different,"Mr.  Gustard  pronounced, very  solemnly. 
"I've  lived  my  life.  If  I  was  to  take  a  walk  round  Hamp- 
stead  I  couldn't  hardly  peep  into  a  garden  without  seeing  a 
tree  as  I'd  planted  myself.  And  when  I'm  gone,  the  trees 
'11  still  be  there.  That's  something  to  think  about,  that  is. 
There  was  a  clergyman  came  nosing  round  here  the  other 
day  to  ask  me  why  I  didn't  go  to  church.  I  told  him  I'd 
done  without  church  as  a  lad,  and  I  couldn't  see  why  I 
shouldn't  do  without  it  now.  'But  you're  growing  old, 
Mr.  Gustard/  he  says  to  me.  'That's  just  it,'  I  says  to 
him.  'I'm  getting  very  near  the  time  when,  if  all  they  say 
is  true,  I  shall  be  in  the  heavenly  choir  for  ever  and  ever, 
amen,  and  the  less  singing  I  hear  for  the  rest  of  my  time  on 
earth  the  better/  'That's  a  very  blasphemous  remark/ 
he  says  to  me.  'Is  it?'  says  I  to  him.  'Well,  here's 
another.  Perhaps  all  this  talk  by  parsons/  I  says,  'about 
this  life  on  earth  being  just  a  choir  practice  for  heaven 
won't  bear  looking  into.  Perhaps  we  shall  all  die  and  go  to 
sleep  and  never  wake  up  and  never  dream  and  never  do 
nothing  at  all,  never.  And  if  that's  true/  I  says,  'I  reckon 
I  shall  bust  my  coffin  with  laughing  when  I  think  of  my 
trees  growing  and  growing  and  growing  and  you  preaching 
to  a  lot  of  old  women  and  children  about  something  you 
don't  know  nothing  about  and  they  don't  know  nothing 
about  and  nobody  don't  know  nothing  about.'  With  that 
I  offered  him  a  pear,  and  he  walked  off  very  offended  with 
his  head  in  the  air.  You  get  out  and  about,  my  dear. 
Bustle  around  and  enjoy  yourself.  That's  my  motto  for 
the  young." 

Sylvia  felt  that  there  was  much  to  be  said  for  Mr. 
Custard's  attitude,  and  she  took  his  advice  so  far  as  to  go 
for  a  long  walk  on  the  Heath  that  very  afternoon.  Yet 
there  was  something  lacking.  When  she  got  home  again 
she  found  that  the  book  of  adventure  which  she  had  been 
reading  was  no  longer  capable  of  keeping  her  thoughts 
fixed.  The  stupid  part  of  it  was  that  her  thoughts  wan- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  85 

dered  nowhere  in  particular  and  without  attaching  them- 
selves to  a  definite  object.  She  would  try  to  concentrate 
them  upon  Jimmy  and  speculate  what  he  was  doing,  but 
Jimmy  would  turn  into  Claude  Raglan;  and  when  she 
began  to  speculate  what  Claude  was  doing,  Claude  would 
turn  back  again  into  Jimmy.  Her  own  innermost  restless- 
ness made  her  so  fidgety  that  she  went  to  the  window  and 
stared  at  the  road  along  the  dusky  Heath.  The  garden 
gate  of  next  door  swung  to  with  a  click,  and  Sylvia  saw  a 
young  man  coming  toward  the  house.  She  was  usually 
without  the  least  interest  in  young  men,  but  on  this  after- 
noon of  indefinable  and  errant  thoughts  she  welcomed  the 
least  excuse  for  bringing  herself  back  to  a  material  object; 
and  this  young  man,  though  it  was  twilight  and  his  face  was 
not  clearly  visible,  managed  to  interest  her  somehow,  so 
that  at  tea  she  found  herself  asking  Mr.  Gustard  who  he 
might  be  and  most  unaccountably  blushing  at  the  question. 

"That  'ud  be  young  Artie,  wouldn't  it?"  he  suggested 
to  his  wife.  She  nodded  over  the  squat  teapot  that  she  so 
much  resembled: 

"That  must  be  him  come  back  from  his  uncle's.  Mrs. 
Madden  was  only  saying  to  me  this  morning,  when  we  was 
waiting  for  the  grocer's  man,  that  she  was  expecting  him 
this  evening.  She  spoils  him  something  shocking.  If  you 
please,  his  highness  has  been  down  into  Hampshire  to  see 
if  he  would  like  to  be  a  gentleman  farmer.  Whoever 
heard,  I  should  like  to  know?  Why  he  can't  be  long 
turned  seventeen.  It's  a  pity  his  father  isn't  alive  to  keep 
him  from  idling  his  time  away." 

"There's  no  harm  in  giving  a  bit  of  liberty  to  the  young," 
Mr.  Gustard  answered,  preparing  to  be  as  eloquent  as  the 
large  piece  of  bread  and  butter  in  his  mouth  would  let  him. 
"I'm  not  in  favor  of  pushing  a  young  man  too  far." 

"No,  you  was  never  in  favor  of  pushing  anything, 
neither  yourself  nor  your  business,"  said  Mrs.  Gustard, 
sharply.  "  But  I  think  it's  a  sin  to  let  a  boy  like  that  moon 
away  all  his  time  with  a  book.  Books  were  only  intended 
for  the  gentry  and  people  as  have  grown  too  old  for  any- 
thing else,  and  even  then  they're  bad  for  their  eyes." 

Sylvia  wondered  whether  Mrs.  Gustard  intended  to 
criticize  unfavorably  her  own  manner  of  life,  but  she  left 


86  Sylvia    Scarlett 

the  defense  of  books  to  Mr.  Gustard,  who  was  so  impatient 
to  begin  that  he  nearly  choked: 

"Because  I  don't  read,"  he  said,  "that's  no  reason  for 
me  to  try  and  stop  others  from  reading.  What  I  say  is 
'liberty  for  all/  If  young  Artie  Madden  wants  to  read, 
let  him  read.  If  Sylvia  here  wants  to  read,  let  her  read. 
Books  give  employment  to  a  lot  of  people — binders, 
printers,  paper-makers,  booksellers.  It's  a  regular  trade. 
If  people  didn't  like  to  smell  flowers  and  sit  about  under 
trees,  there  wouldn't  be  no  gardeners,  would  there?  Very 
well,  then;  and  if  there  wasn't  people  who  wanted  to  read, 
there  wouldn't  be  no  printers." 

"What  about  the  people  who  write  all  the  rubbish?" 
Mrs.  Gustard  demanded,  fiercely.  "Nice,  idle  lot  of  good- 
for-nothings  they  are,  I'm  sure." 

"That's  because  the  only  writing  fellow  we  ever  knew 
got  that  servant-girl  of  ours  into  trouble." 

"Samuel,"  Mrs.  Gustard  interrupted,  "that  '11  do!" 

"I  don't  suppose  every  writing  fellow's  like  him,"  Mr. 
Gustard  went  on.  "And,  anyway,  the  girl  was  a  saucy 
hussy." 

"Samuel!    That  will  do,  I  said." 

"Well,  so  she  was,"  Mr.  Gustard  continued,  defiantly. 
"  Didn't  she  used  to  powder  her  face  with  your  Berwick's  ?" 

"I'll  trouble  you  not  to  spit  crumbs  all  over  my  clean 
cloth,"  said  Mrs.  Gustard,  "making  the  whole  place  look 
like  a  bird-cage!" 

Mr.  Gustard  winked  at  Sylvia  and  was  silent.  She  for 
her  part  had  already  begun  to  weave  round  Arthur  Madden 
a  veil  of  romance,  when  the  practical  side  of  her  suddenly 
roused  itself  to  a  sense  of  what  was  going  on  and  ad- 
monished her  to  leave  off  dreaming  and  attend  to  her  cat. 

Up-stairs  in  her  bedroom,  she  opened  her  window  and 
looked  out  at  the  faint  drizzle  of  rain  which  was  just  enough 
to  mellow  the  leafy  autumnal  scents  and  diffuse  the  golden 
beams  of  the  lamps  along  the  Heath.  There  was  the  sound 
of  another  window's  being  opened  on  a  line  with  hers; 
presently  a  head  and  shoulders  scarcely  definable  in  the 
darkness  leaned  out,  whistling  an  old  French  air  that  was 
familiar  to  her  from  earliest  childhood,  the  words  of  which 
had  long  ago  been  forgotten.  She  could  not  help  whistling 


Sylvia    Scarlett  87 

the  air  in  unison;  and  after  a  moment's  silence  a  voice 
from  the  head  and  shoulders  asked  who  it  was. 
"A  girl,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Anybody  could  tell  that,"  the  voice  commented,  a 
little  scornfully.  "  Because  the  noise  is  all  woolly." 

"It's  not,"  Sylvia  contradicted,  indignantly.  "Perhaps 
you'll  say  I'm  out  of  tune  ?  I  know  quite  well  who  you 
are.  You're  Arthur  Madden,  the  boy  next  door." 

'But  who  are  you?" 

'I'm  Sylvia  Scarlett." 

'Are  you  a  niece  of  Mrs.  Gustard?"  the  voice  inquired. 

'Of  course  not,"  Sylvia  scoffed.  "I'm  just  staying 
here." 

'Who  with?" 

'By  myself." 

'By  yourself?"  the  voice  echoed,  incredulously. 

'Why  not?    I'm  nearly  sixteen." 

This  was  too  much  for  Arthur  Madden,  who  struck  a 
match  to  illuminate  the  features  of  the  strange  unknown. 
Although  he  did  not  succeed  in  discerning  Sylvia,  he  lit  up 
his  own  face,  which  she  liked  well  enough  to  suggest  they 
should  go  for  a  walk,  making  the  proposal  a  kind  of  test  for 
herself  of  Arthur  Madden's  character,  and  deciding  that  if 
he  showed  the  least  hesitation  in  accepting  she  would  never 
speak  to  him  again.  The  boy,  however,  was  immediately 
willing;  the  two  pairs  of  shoulders  vanished;  Sylvia  put 
on  her  coat  and  went  down-stairs. 

"Going  out  for  a  blow?"  Mr.  Gustard  asked. 

Sylvia  nodded.  "With  the  boy  next  door,"  she 
answered. 

"You  haven't  been  long,"  said  Mr.  Gustard,  approv- 
ingly. "That's  the  way  I  like  to  see  it.  When  I  courted 
Mrs.  Gustard, which  was  forty  years  ago  come  next  Novem- 
ber, it  was  in  the  time  of  toolip-planting,  and  I  hove  a 
toolip  bulb  at  her  and  caught  her  in  the  chignon.  'What- 
ever are  you  doing  of?'  she  says  to  me.  'It's  a  proposal  of 
marriage,'  I  says,  and  when  she  started  giggling  I  was  that 
pleased  I  planted  half  the  toolips  upside  down.  But  that's 
forty  years  ago,  that  is.  Mrs.  Custard's  grown  more 
particular  since,  and  so  as  she's  washing  up  the  tea-things 
in  the  scullery,  I  should  just  slip  out,  and  I'll  tell  her  you've 


88  Sylvia    Scarlett 

gone  out  to  get  a  paper  to  see  if  it's  true  what  somebody 
said  about  Buckingham  Palace  being  burned  to  a  cinder." 

Sylvia  was  not  at  all  sure  that  she  ought  to  recognize 
Mrs.  Custard's  opinion  even  so  far  as  by  slipping  out  and 
thereby  giving  her  an  idea  that  she  did  not  possess  perfect 
liberty  of  action.  However,  she  decided  that  the  point 
was  too  trifling  to  worry  about,  and,  with  a  wave  of  her 
hand,  she  left  her  landlord  to  tell  what  story  he  chose  to 
his  wife. 

Arthur  Madden  was  waiting  for  her  by  his  gate  when  she 
reached  the  end  of  the  garden;  while  they  wandered  along 
by  the  Heath,  indifferent  to  the  drizzle,  Sylvia  felt  an  ex- 
traordinary release  from  the  faint  discontent  of  these  past 
days,  an  extraordinary  delight  in  finding  herself  with  a 
companion  who  was  young  like  herself  and  who,  like  her- 
self, seemed  full  of  speculation  upon  the  world  which  he  was 
setting  out  to  explore,  regarding  it  as  an  adventure  and 
ready  to  exchange  hopes  and  fears  and  fancies  with  her  in  a 
way  that  no  one  had  ever  done  hitherto;  moreover,  he  was 
ready  to  be  most  flatteringly  impressed  by  her  experiences, 
even  if  he  still  maintained  she  could  not  whistle  properly. 
The  friendship  between  Sylvia  and  Arthur  begun  upon 
that  night  grew  daily  closer.  Mrs.  Gustard  used  to  say 
that  they  wasted  each  other's  time,  but  she  was  in  the 
minority;  she  used  to  say  also  that  Arthur  was  being  more 
spoiled  than  ever  by  his  mother;  but  it  was  this  very  capac- 
ity for  being  spoiled  that  endeared  him  to  Sylvia,  who  had 
spent  a  completely  free  existence  for  so  long  now  that  unless 
Arthur  had  been  allowed  his  freedom  she  would  soon  have 
tired  of  the  friendship.  She  liked  Mrs.  Madden,  a  beautiful 
and  unpractical  woman,  who  unceasingly  played  long 
sonatas  on  a  cracked  piano;  at  least  she  would  have  played 
them  unceasingly  had  she  not  continually  been  jumping 
up  to  wait  on  Arthur,  hovering  round  him  like  a  dark  and 
iridescent  butterfly. 

In  the  course  of  many  talks  together  Arthur  told  Sylvia 
the  family  history.  It  seemed  that  his  mother  had  been 
the  daughter  of  a  gentleman,  not  an  ordinary  kind  of  top- 
hatted  gentleman,  but  a  squire  with  horses  and  hounds 
and  a  park;  his  father  had  been  a  groom  and  she  had 
eloped  with  him,  but  Sylvia  was  not  to  suppose  that  his 


Sylvia    Scarlett  89 

father  had  been  an  ordinary  kind  of  groom;  he  too  came 
from  good  stock,  though  he  had  been  rather  wild.  His 
father's  father  had  been  a  farmer  in  Sussex,  and  he  had 
just  come  back  from  staying  at  the  farm,  where  his  uncle 
had  offered  to  give  him  a  start  in  life,  but  he  had  found  he 
did  not  care  much  for  farm-work.  His  mother's  family 
would  have  nothing  to  do  with  her  beyond  allowing  her 
enough  to  live  upon  without  disturbing  them. 

"What  are  you  going  to  do?"  Sylvia  asked. 

Arthur  replied  that  he  did  not  know,  but  that  he  had 
thoughts  of  being  a  soldier. 

"A  soldier?"  said  Sylvia,  doubtfully.  Her  experience 
of  soldiers  was  confined  to  Blanche's  lovers,  and  the  uni- 
versal connotation  in  France  of  soldiery  with  a  vile  servi- 
tude that  could  hardly  be  avoided. 

"But  of  course  the  worst  of  it  is,"  Arthur  explained, 
"there  aren't  any  wars  nowadays." 

They  were  walking  over  the  Heath  on  a  fine  November 
day  about  Martinmas;  presently,  when  they  sat  down  un- 
der some  pines  and  looked  at  London  spread  beneath  them 
in  a  sparkling  haze,  Arthur  took  Sylvia's  hand  and  told  her 
that  he  loved  her. 

She  nearly  snatched  her  hand  away  and  would  have  told 
him  not  to  be  silly,  but  suddenly  the  beauty  of  the  tranquil 
city  below  and  the  wind  through  the  pines  conquered  her 
spirit;  she  sat  closer  to  him,  letting  her  head  droop  upon 
his  shoulder;  when  his  clasp  tightened  round  her  un- 
resisting hand  she  burst  into  tears,  unable  to  tell  him  that 
her  sorrow  was  nothing  but  joy,  that  he  had  nothing  to  do 
with  it  nor  with  her,  and  yet  that  he  had  everything  to  do 
with  it,  because  with  no  one  else  could  she  have  borne  this 
incommunicable  display  of  life.  Then  she  dried  her  tears 
and  told  Arthur  she  thought  he  had  better  become  a  high- 
wayman. 

"Highwaymen  don't  exist  any  longer,"  Arthur  objected. 
"All  the  jolly  things  have  disappeared  from  the  world — 
war  and  highwaymen  and  pirates  and  troubadours  and 
crusaders  and  maypoles  and  the  Inquisition.  Everything." 

Gradually  Sylvia  learned  from  Arthur  how  much  of  what 
she  had  been  reading  was  mere  invention,  and  in  the  first 
bitterness  of  disillusionment  she  wished  to  renounce  books 


90  Sylvia    Scarlett 

forever;  but  Arthur  dissuaded  her  from  doing  that,  and 
they  used  to  read  simultaneously  the  same  books  so  as  to  be 
able  to  discuss  them  during  their  long  walks.  They  became 
two  romantics  born  out  of  due  season,  two  romantics  that 
should  have  lived  a  century  ago  and  that  now  bewailed  the 
inability  of  the  modern  world  to  supply  what  their  advent- 
urous souls  demanded. 

Arthur  was  inclined  to  think  that  Sylvia  had  much  less 
cause  to  repine  than  he;  the  more  tales  she  told  him  of  her 
life,  the  more  tributes  of  envy  he  paid  to  her  good  fortune. 
He  pointed  out  that  Monkley  scarcely  differed  from  the 
highwayman  of  romance;  nor  did  he  doubt  but  that  if  all 
his  enterprises  could  be  known  he  would  rival  Dick  Turpin 
himself.  Sylvia  agreed  with  all  he  said,  but  she  urged  the 
inequality  of  her  own  share  in  the  achievement.  What  she 
wanted  was  something  more  than  to  sit  at  home  and  enjoy 
fruits  in  the  stealing  of  which  she  had  played  no  part.  She 
wanted  none  of  Arthur's  love  unless  he  were  prepared  to 
face  the  problem  of  living  life  at  its  fullest  in  company 
with  her.  She  would  let  him  kiss  her  sometimes,  because, 
unhappily,  it  seemed  that  even  very  young  men  were  in- 
fected with  this  malady,  and  that  if  deprived  of  this  odious 
habit  they  were  liable  to  lose  determination  and  sink  into 
incomprehensible  despondency.  At  the  same  time  Sylvia 
made  Arthur  clearly  understand  that  she  was  yielding  to 
his  weakness,  not  to  her  own,  and  that,  if  he  wished  to 
retain  her  compassion,  he  must  prove  that  the  devotion  of 
which  he  boasted  was  vital  to  his  being. 

"You  mustn't  just  kiss  me,"  Sylvia  warned  him,  "be- 
cause it's  easy.  It's  very  difficult,  really,  because  it's  very 
difficult  for  me  to  let  you  do  it.  I  have  to  wind  myself  up 
beforehand  just  as  if  I  were  going  to  pull  out  a  loose 
tooth." 

Arthur  gazed  at  her  with  wide-open,  liquid  eyes;  his 
mouth  trembled.  "You  say  such  cruel  things,"  he 
murmured. 

Sylvia  punched  him  as  hard  as  she  could.  "I  won't  be 
stared  at  like  that.  You  look  like  a  cow  when  you  stare 
at  me  like  that.  Buck  up  and  think  what  we're  going  to 
do." 

"I'm  ready  to  do  anything,"  Arthur  declared,  "as  long 


Sylvia    Scarlett  91 

as  you're  decent  to  me.  But  you're  such  an  extraordinary 
girl.  One  moment  you  burst  into  tears  and  put  your  head 
on  my  shoulder,  and  the  next  moment  you're  punching 
me." 

"And  I  shall  punch  you  again,"  Sylvia  said,  fiercely,  "if 
you  dare  to  remind  me  that  I  ever  cried  in  front  of  you. 
You  weren't  there  when  I  cried." 

"But  I  was,"  he  protested. 

"No,  you  weren't.  You  were  only  there  like  a  tree  or  a 
cloud." 

"Or  a  cow,"  said  Arthur,  gloomily. 

"I  think  that  if  we  did  go  away  together,"  Sylvia  said, 
meditatively,  "I  should  leave  you  almost  at  once,  because 
you  will  keep  returning  to  things  I  said.  My  father  used 
to  be  like  that." 

"But  if  we  go  away,"  Arthur  asked,  "how  are  we  going 
to  live?  I  shouldn't  be  any  use  on  racecourses.  I'm  the 
sort  of  person  that  gets  taken  in  by  the  three-card  trick." 

"You  make  me  so  angry  when  you  talk  like  that," 
Sylvia  said.  "Of  course  if  you  think  you'll  always  be 
a  fool,  you  always  will  be  a  fool.  Being  in  love  with 
me  must  make  you  think  that  you're  not  a  fool.  Per- 
haps we  never  shall  go  away  together;  but  if  we  do,  you'll 
have  to  begin  by  stealing  bicycles.  Jimmy  Monkley  and 
my  father  did  that  for  a  time.  You  hire  a  bicycle  and  sell 
it  or  pawn  it  a  long  way  off  from  the  shop  it  came  from. 
It's  quite  easy.  Only,  of  course,  it's  best  to  disguise  your- 
self. Father  used  to  paint  out  his  teeth,  wear  blue  glasses, 
and  powder  his  mustache  gray.  But  once  he  made  him- 
self so  old  in  a  place  called  Lewisham  that  the  man  in  the 
bicycle-shop  thought  he  was  too  old  to  ride  and  wouldn't 
let  him  have  a  machine." 

Sylvia  was  strengthened  in  her  resolve  to  launch  Arthur 
upon  the  stormy  seas  of  an  independent  existence  by  the 
placid  harbor  in  which  his  mother  loved  to  see  him  safely 
at  anchor.  Sylvia  could  not  understand  how  a  woman  like 
Mrs.  Madden,  who  had  once  been  willing  to  elope  with  a 
groom,  could  bear  to  let  her  son  spend  his  time  so  ineffec- 
tively. Not  that  she  wished  Mrs.  Madden  to  exert  her 
authority  by  driving  him  into  a  clerkship,  or  indeed  into 
any  profession  for  which  he  had  no  inclination,  but  she 


92  Sylvia    Scarlett 

deplored  the  soft  slavery  which  a  fond  woman  can  impose, 
the  slavery  of  being  waited  upon  that  is  more  deadening 
than  the  slavery  of  waiting  upon  other  people.  She  used 
to  make  a  point  of  impressing  upon  Mrs.  Madden  the 
extent  to  which  she  and  Arthur  went  shares  in  everything, 
lest  she  might  suppose  that  Sylvia  imitated  her  complais- 
ance, and  when  Mrs.  Madden  used  to  smile  in  her  tired  way 
and  make  some  remark  about  boy  and  girl  lovers,  Sylvia 
used  to  get  angry  and  try  to  demonstrate  the  unimportance 
of  that  side  of  life. 

"You  funny  child,"  Mrs.  Madden  said.  "When  you're 
older,  how  you'll  laugh  at  what  you  think  now.  Of  course, 
you  don't  know  anything  about  love  yet,  mercifully  for 
you.  I  wish  I  were  richer;  I  should  so  like  to  adopt  you." 

"Oh,  but  I  wouldn't  be  adopted,"  Sylvia  quickly  inter- 
posed. "I  can't  tell  you  how  glad  I  am  that  I  belong  to 
nobody.  And  please  don't  think  I'm  so  innocent,  because 
I'm  not.  I've  seen  a  great  deal  of  love,  you  must  remem- 
ber, and  I've  thought  a  lot  about  it,  and  made  up  my  mind 
that  I'll  never  be  a  slave  to  that  sort  of  thing.  Arthur  may 
be  stupidly  in  love  with  me,  but  I'm  very  strict  with  him 
and  it  doesn't  do  him  any  harm." 

"Come  and  sing  your  favorite  song,"  Mrs.  Madden 
laughed.  "I'll  play  your  accompaniment." 

All  the  discussions  between  them  ended  in  music;  Sylvia 
would  sing  that  she  was  off  with  the  raggle-taggle  gipsies 
— or,  stamping  with  her  foot  upon  the  floor  of  the  old 
house  until  it  shook  and  crossing  her  arms  with  such 
resolution  that  Arthur's  eyes  would  grow  larger  than  ever, 
as  if  he  half  expected  to  see  her  act  upon  the  words  and 
fling  herself  out  into  the  December  night,  regardless  of  all 
but  a  mad  demonstration  of  liberty. 

Sylvia  would  sometimes  sing  about  the  gipsies  to  herself 
while  she  was  undressing,  which  generally  called  forth  a 
protest  from  Mrs.  Gustard,  who  likened  the  effect  to  that 
of  a  young  volcano  let  loose. 

Another  person  that  was  pained  by  Sylvia's  exuberance 
was  Maria,  her  black  cat,  so  called  on  account  of  his  color 
before  he  was  definitely  established  as  a  gentleman.  He 
had  no  ear  for  music  and  he  disapproved  of  dancing;  nor 
did  he  have  the  least  sympathy  with  the  aspirations  of  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  93 

lawless  song  she  sang.  Mrs.  Gustard  considered  that  he 
was  more  artful  than  what  any  one  would  think,  but  she 
repudiated  as  "heathenish"  Sylvia's  contention  that  she 
outwardly  resembled  Maria. 

"Still  I  do  think  I'm  like  a  cat,"  Sylvia  argued.  "Per- 
haps not  very  like  a  black  cat,  more  like  a  tabby.  One  day 
you'll  come  up  to  my  room  and  find  me  purring  on  the 
bed." 

Mrs.  Gustard  exclaimed  against  such  an  unnatural  event. 

Sylvia  received  one  or  two  letters  from  Jimmy  Monkley 
during  the  winter,  in  which  he  wrote  with  considerable 
optimism  of  the  success  of  his  venture  and  thought  he 
might  be  back  in  Hampstead  by  February.  He  came  back 
unexpectedly,  however,  in  the  middle  of  January,  and 
Sylvia  was  only  rather  glad  to  see  him;  she  had  grown  fond 
of  her  life  alone  and  dreaded  Jimmy's  habit  of  arranging 
matters  over  her  head.  He  was  not  so  amiable  as  formerly, 
because  the  scheme  had  only  been  partially  successful  and 
he  had  failed  to  make  enough  money  to  bring  the  flash 
gambling-hell  perceptibly  nearer.  Sylvia  had  almost  for- 
gotten that  project;  it  seemed  to  her  now  a  dull  project, 
neither  worthy  of  herself  nor  of  him.  She  did  not  attempt, 
on  Jimmy's  return,  to  change  her  own  way  of  spending  the 
time,  and  she  persisted  in  taking  the  long  walks  with 
Arthur  as  usual. 

"What  the  devil  you  see  to  admire  in  that  long-legged, 
saucer-eyed,  curly-headed  mother's  pet  I  don't  know," 
Jimmy  grumbled. 

"I  don't  admire  him,"  Sylvia  said.  "I  don't  admire 
anybody  except  Joan  of  Arc.  But  I  like  him." 

Jimmy  scowled;  and  later  on  that  day  Mr.  Gustard 
warned  Sylvia  that  her  uncle  (as  such  was  Jimmy  known  in 
the  lodgings)  had  carried  on  alarmingly  about  her  friend- 
ship with  young  Artie. 

"It's  nothing  to  do  with  him,"  Sylvia  affirmed,  with  out- 
thrust  chin. 

"Nothing  whatever,"  Mr.  Gustard  agreed.  "But  if  I 
was  you  I  wouldn't  throw  young  Artie  in  his  face.  I've 
never  had  a  niece  myself,  but  from  what  I  can  make  out 
an  uncle  feels  something  like  a  father;  and  a  father  gets 
very  worried  about  his  rights." 


94  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"But  you've  never  had  any  children,  and  so  you  can't 
know  any  more  about  the  feelings  of  a  father,"  Sylvia 
objected. 

"Ah,  but  I've  got  my  own  father  to  look  back  upon," 
Mr.  Gustard  said.  "He  mostly  took  a  spade  to  me,  I 
remember,  though  he  wasn't  against  jabbing  me  in  the  ribs 
with  a  trowel  if  there  wasn't  a  spade  handy.  I  reckon  it 
was  him  as  first  put  the  notion  of  liberty  for  all  into  my 
head.  I  never  set  much  store  by  uncles,  though.  The 
only  uncle  I  ever  had  died  of  croup  when  he  was  two  years 
old." 

"My  father  didn't  like  his  aunts,"  Sylvia  added  to  the 
condemnation.  "He  was  brought  up  by  two  aunts." 

"Aunts  in  general  is  sour  bodies,  'specially  when  they're 
in  charge  and  get  all  the  fuss  of  having  children  with  none 
of  the  fun." 

"Mr.  Monkley  isn't  really  my  uncle,"  Sylvia  abruptly 
proclaimed. 

"Go  on!  you  don't  mean  it?"  said  Mr.  Gustard.  "I 
suppose  he's  your  guardian?" 

"He's  nothing  at  all,"  Sylvia  answered. 

"He  must  be  something." 

"He's  absolutely  nothing,"  she  insisted.  "He  used  to 
live  with  my  father,  and  when  my  father  died  he  just  went 
on  living  with  me.  If  I  don't  want  to  live  with  him  I 
needn't." 

"But  you  must  live  with  somebody,"  said  Mr.  Gustard. 
"There's  a  law  about  having  visible  means  of  support. 
You  couldn't  have  a  lot  of  kids  living  on  their  own." 

"Why  not?"  Sylvia  asked,  in  contemptuous  amazement. 

"Why  not?"  Mr.  Gustard  repeated.  "Why  because 
every  one  would  get  pestered  to  death.  It's  the  same  with 
stray  dogs.  Stray  dogs  have  got  to  have  a  home.  If  they 
haven't  a  home  of  their  own,  they're  taken  to  the  Dogs' 
Home  at  Battersea  and  cremated,  which  is  a  painless  and 
mercenary  death." 

"I  don't  call  that  much  of  a  home,"  Sylvia  scoffed.  "A 
place  where  you're  killed." 

"That's  because  we're  speaking  of  dogs.  Of  course,  if 
the  police  started  in  cremating  children,  there'd  be  a  regular 
outcry.  So  the  law  insists  on  children  having  homes." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  95 

Sylvia  tried  hard  to  convince  Mr.  Gustard  that  she  was 
different  from  other  children,  and  in  any  case  no  longer  a 
child;  but  though  the  discussion  lasted  a  long  time  he 
would  not  admit  the  logic  of  Sylvia's  arguments;  in  the 
end  she  decided  he  did  not  know  what  he  was  talking  about. 

Monkley  so  much  disliked  Sylvia's  intimacy  with  Arthur 
that  he  began  to  talk  of  moving  from  Hampstead,  where- 
upon she  warned  him  that  if  he  tried  to  go  away  without 
paying  the  rent  she  would  make  a  point  of  letting  Mr. 
Gustard  know  where  they  had  gone. 

"It  strikes  me,"  Monkley  said,  and  when  he  spoke, 
Sylvia  was  reminded  of  the  tone  he  used  when  she  had 
protested  against  his  treatment  of  Maudie  Tilt — "it 
strikes  me  that  since  I've  been  away  you've  taken  things  a 
bit  too  much  into  your  own  hands.  That's  a  trick  you'd 
better  drop  with  me,  or  we  shall  quarrel." 

Sylvia  braced  herself  to  withstand  him  as  she  had  with- 
stood him  before;  but  she  could  not  help  feeling  a  little 
apprehensive,  so  cold  were  his  green  eyes,  so  thin  his 
mouth. 

"I  don't  care  if  we  quarrel  or  not,"  she  declared.  "Be- 
cause if  we  quarreled  it  would  mean  that  I  couldn't  bear 
you  near  me  any  longer  and  that  I  was  glad  to  quarrel.  If 
you  make  me  hate  you,  Jimmy,  you  may  be  sorry,  but  I 
shall  never  be  sorry.  If  you  make  me  hate  you,  Jimmy, 
you  can't  think  how  dreadfully  much  I  shall  hate  you." 

"Don't  try  to  come  the  little  actress  over  me,"  Monkley 
said.  "I've  known  too  many  women  in  my  life  to  be 
bounced  by  a  kid  like  you.  But  that's  enough.  I  can't 
think  why  I  pay  so  much  attention  to  you." 

"No,"  Sylvia  said.  "All  the  women  you've  known 
don't  seem  to  have  been  able  to  teach  you  how  to  manage 
a  little  girl  like  me.  What  a  pity!" 

She  laughed  and  left  him  alone. 

There  was  a  halcyon  week  that  February,  and  Sylvia 
spent  every  day  and  all  day  on  the  Heath  with  Arthur. 
People  used  to  turn  and  stare  after  them  as  they  walked 
arm-in-arm  over  the  vivid  green  grass. 

"I  think  it's  you  they  stare  at,"  Sylvia  said.  "You  look 
interesting  with  your  high  color  and  dark  curly  hair. 
You  look  rather  foreign.  Perhaps  people  think  you're  a 

7 


96  Sylvia    Scarlett 

poet.  I  read  the  other  day  about  a  poet  called  Keats  who 
lived  in  Hampstead  and  loved  a  girl  called  Fanny  Brawne. 
I  wish  I  knew  what  she  looked  like.  It's  not  a  very  pretty 
name.  Now  I've  got  rather  a  pretty  name,  I  think; 
though  I'm  not  pretty  myself." 

"You're  not  exactly  pretty,"  Arthur  agreed.  "But  I 
think  if  I  saw  you  I  should  turn  round  to  look  at  you. 
You're  like  a  person  in  a  picture.  You  seem  to  stand  out 
and  to  be  the  most  important  figure.  In  paintings  that's 
because  the  chief  figure  is  usually  so  much  larger  than  the 
others.  Well,  that's  the  impression  you  give  me." 

Speculation  upon  Sylvia's  personality  ceased  when  they 
got  home;  Monkley  threatened  Arthur  in  a  very  abusive 
way,  even  going  as  far  as  to  pick  up  a  stone  and  fling  it 
through  one  of  the  few  panes  of  glass  left  in  the  tumble- 
down greenhouse  in  order  to  illustrate  the  violent  methods 
he  proposed  to  adopt. 

The  next  day,  when  Sylvia  went  to  fetch  Arthur  for 
their  usual  walk,  he  made  some  excuse  and  was  obviously 
frightened  to  accompany  her. 

"What  can  he  do  to  you?"  Sylvia  demanded,  in  scornful 
displeasure.  "The  worst  he  can  do  is  to  kill  you,  and  then 
you'd  have  died  because  you  wouldn't  surrender.  Haven't 
you  read  about  martyrs?" 

"Of  course  I've  read  about  martyrs,"  said  Arthur,  rather 
querulously.  "  But  reading  about  martyrs  is  very  different 
from  being  a  martyr  yourself.  You  seem  to  think  every- 
body can  be  anything  you  happen  to  read  about.  You 
wouldn't  care  to  be  a  martyr,  Sylvia." 

"That's  just  where  you're  wrong,"  she  loftily  declared. 
"I'd  much  sooner  be  a  martyr  than  a  coward." 

Arthur  winced  at  her  plain  speaking.  "You  don't  care 
what  you  say,"  was  his  reproach. 

"No,  and  I  don't  care  what  I  do,"  Sylvia  agreed.  "Are 
you  coming  out  with  me?  Because  if  you're  not,  you  shall 
never  be  my  friend  again." 

Arthur  pulled  himself  together  and  braved  Monkley's 
threats.  On  a  quiet  green  summit  he  demanded  her  im- 
patient kisses  for  a  recompense;  she,  conscious  of  his  weak- 
ness and  against  her  will  made  fonder  of  him  by  this  very 
weakness,  kissed  him  less  impatiently  than  was  her  wont,  so 


Sylvia    Scarlett  97 

that  Arthur,  under  the  inspiration  of  that  rare  caress, 
vowed  he  cared  for  nobody  and  for  nothing,  if  she  would 
but  always  treat  him  thus  kindly. 

Sylvia,  who  was  determined  to  make  Jimmy  pay  for  his 
bad  behavior,  invited  herself  to  tea  with  Mrs.  Madden; 
afterward,  though  it  was  cloudy  and  ominous,  Arthur  and 
she  walked  out  on  the  Heath  once  more,  until  it  rained  so 
hard  that  they  were  driven  home.  It  was  about  seven 
o'clock  when  Sylvia  reached  her  room,  her  hair  all  tangled 
with  moisture,  her  eyes  and  cheeks  on  fire  with  the  exhilara- 
tion of  that  scurry  through  the  rain.  She  had  not  stood  a 
moment  to  regard  herself  in  the  glass  when  Monkley, 
following  close  upon  her  heels,  shut  the  door  behind  him 
and  turned  the  key  in  the  lock.  Sylvia  looked  round  in 
astonishment;  by  a  trick  of  candle-light  his  eyes  gleamed 
for  an  instant,  so  that  she  felt  a  tremor  of  fear. 

"You've  come  back  at  last,  have  you?"  he  began  in  a 
slow  voice,  so  deliberate  and  gentle  in  its  utterance  that 
Sylvia  might  not  have  grasped  the  extent  of  his  agitation, 
had  not  one  of  his  legs,  affected  by  a  nervous  twitch, 
drummed  upon  the  floor  a  sinister  accompaniment.  "You 

shameless  little  b h,  I  thought  I  forbade  you  to  go  out 

with  him  again.  You've  been  careering  over  the  Heath. 
You've  been  encouraging  him  to  make  love  to  you.  Look 
at  your  hair — it's  in  a  regular  tangle!  and  your  cheeks — 
they're  like  fire.  Well,  if  you  can  let  that  nancified  milk- 
sop mess  you  about,  you  can  put  up  with  me.  I've  wanted 
to  long  enough,  God  knows;  and  this  is  the  reward  I  get  for 

leaving  you  alone.  You  give  yourself  to  the  first  b y 

boy  that  comes  along." 

Before  Sylvia  had  time  to  reply,  Monkley  had  leaped 
across  the  room  and  crushed  her  to  him. 

"Kiss  me,  damn  you,  kiss  me!  Put  your  arms  round 
me." 

Sylvia  would  not  scream,  because  she  could  not  have 
endured  that  anybody  should  behold  her  in  such  an  igno- 
minious plight.  Therefore  she  only  kicked  and  fought,  and 
whispered  all  the  while,  with  savage  intensity!  "You  frog! 
you  frog!  You  look  like  a  frog!  Leave  me  alone!" 

Monkley  held  her  more  closely  and  forced  her  mouth 
against  his  own,  but  Sylvia  bit  through  his  under  lip  till  her 


98  Sylvia    Scarlett 

teeth  met.  The  pain  caused  him  to  start  back  and  tread  on 
Maria,  who,  searching  in  a  panic  for  better  cover  than  the 
bed  afforded,  had  run  between  his  legs.  The  cat,  uttering 
one  of  those  unimaginable  wails  with  which  only  cats  have 
power  so  horribly  to  surprise,  retired  to  a  corner,  where  he 
hissed  and  growled.  In  another  corner  Sylvia  spat  forth 
the  unclean  blood  and  wiped  from  her  lips  the  soilure  of 
the  kisses. 

Monkley  had  had  enough  for  the  present.  The  pain  and 
sudden  noise  had  shaken  his  nerves.  When  the  blood  ran 
down  his  chin,  bedabbling  his  tie,  he  unlocked  the  door  and 
retired,  crying  out  almost  in  a  whimper  for  something  to 
stop  a  bad  razor  cut.  Mrs.  Gustard  went  to  the  wood-shed 
for  cobwebs;  but  Monkley  soon  shouted  down  that  he 
had  found  some  cotton  wool,  and  Sylvia  heard  a  cork  being 
drawn.  She  made  up  her  mind  to  kill  him  that  night,  but 
she  was  perplexed  by  the  absence  of  a  suitable  weapon,  and 
gradually  it  was  borne  in  upon  her  mind  that  if  she  killed 
Monkley  she  would  have  to  pay  the  penalty,  which  did  not 
seem  to  her  a  satisfactory  kind  of  revenge.  She  gave  up  the 
notion  of  killing  him  and  decided  to  run  away  with  Arthur 
instead. 

For  a  long  time  Sylvia  sat  in  her  bedroom,  thinking  over 
her  plan;  then  she  went  next  door  and  asked  Arthur  to 
come  out  and  talk  to  her  about  something  important. 
They  stood  whispering  in  the  wet  garden,  while  she  be- 
witched him  into  offering  to  share  her  future.  He  was 
dazed  by  the  rapidity  with  which  she  disposed  of  every  ob- 
jection he  brought  forward.  She  knew  how  to  get  enough 
money  for  them  to  start  with.  She  knew  how  to  escape 
from  the  house,  and  because  the  creeper  beneath  Arthur's 
window  was  not  strong  enough  to  bear  his  weight,  he  must 
tie  his  sheets  together.  He  must  not  bring  much  luggage; 
she  would  only  bring  a  small  valise,  and  Maria  could  travel 
in  her  work-basket. 

"Maria?"  echoed  Arthur,  in  dismay. 

"Of  course!  it  was  Maria  who  saved  me,"  said  Sylvia. 
"I  shall  wait  till  Monkley  is  asleep.  I  expect  he'll  be  asleep 
early,  because  he's  drinking  brandy  hard  now;  then  I  shall 
whistle  the  last  line  of  the  raggle-taggle  gipsies  and  slither 
down  from  my  window  by  the  ivy." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  99 

She  stuffed  Arthur's  reeling  brain  with  further  details, 
and,  catching  him  to  her  heart,  she  kissed  him  with  as  much 
enthusiasm  as  might  have  been  mistaken  for  passion.  In 
the  end,  between  coaxing  and  frightening  him,  threatening 
and  inspiring  him,  Sylvia  made  Arthur  agree  to  every- 
thing, and  danced  back  indoors. 

"Anybody  would  think  you  were  glad  because  your 
guardian  angel's  gone  and  sliced  a  rasher  off  of  his  mouth," 
Mr.  Custard  observed. 

By  ten  o'clock  all  was  quiet  in  the  house.  Sylvia  chose 
with  the  greatest  care  her  equipment  for  the  adventure. 
She  had  recently  bought  a  tartan  frock,  which,  not  having 
yet  been  worn,  she  felt  would  excellently  become  the  occa- 
sion; this  she  put  on,  and  plaited  her  tangled  hair  in  a  long 
pigtail.  The  result  was  unsatisfactory,  for  it  made  her  look 
too  prim  for  a  heroine;  she  therefore  undid  the  pigtail 
and  tied  her  hair  loosely  back  with  a  nut-brown  bow.  It 
was  still  impossibly  early  for  an  escape,  so  Sylvia  sat  down 
on  the  edge  of  her  bed  and  composed  herself  to  read  the 
escape  of  Fabrizio  from  the  Sforza  tower  in  Parma.  The 
book  in  which  she  read  this  was  not  one  that  she  had  been 
able  to  read  through  without  a  great  deal  of  skipping;  but 
this  escape  which  she  had  only  come  across  a  day  or  two 
before  seemed  a  divine  omen  to  approve  her  decision. 
Sylvia  regretted  the  absence  of  the  armed  men  at  the  foot 
of  the  tower,  but  said  to  herself  that,  after  all,  she  was 
escaping  with  her  lover,  whereas  Fabrizio  had  been  com- 
pelled to  leave  Clelia  Conti  behind.  The  night  wore  away; 
at  half  past  eleven  Sylvia  dropped  her  valise  from  the 
window  and  whistled  that  she  was  off  with  the  raggle- 
taggle  gipsies — oh.  Then  she  waited  until  a  ghostly  snake 
was  uncoiled  from  Arthur's  window. 

"My  dearest  boy,  you're  an  angel,"  she  trilled,  in  an 
ecstasy,  when  she  saw  him  slide  safely  down  into  the 
garden. 

"Catch  Maria,"  she  whispered.  "I'm  coming  myself  in 
a  moment." 

Arthur  caught  her  work-basket,  and  a  faint  protesting 
mew  floated  away  on  the  darkness.  Sylvia  wrapped  herself 
up,  and  then  very  cautiously,  candle  in  hand,  walked 
across  to  the  door  of  Monkley's  room  and  listened.  He  was 


ioo  Sylvia    Scarlett 

snoring  loudly.  She  pushed  open  the  door  and  beheld  him 
fast  asleep,  a  red-and-white  beard  of  cotton  wool  upon 
his  chin.  Then  risking  all  in  an  impulse  to  be  quick, 
though  she  was  almost  stifled  by  fear,  she  hurried  across 
the  room  to  his  trunk.  He  kept  all  his  money  in  a  tin  box. 
How  she  hoped  there  was  enough  to  make  him  rue  her 
flight.  Monkley  never  stirred;  the  box  was  safe  in  her 
muff.  She  stole  back  to  her  room,  blew  out  the  candle, 
flung  the  muff"  down  to  Arthur,  held  her  breath  when  the 
coins  rattled,  put  one  leg  over  the  sill,  and  scrambled  down 
by  the  ivy. 

"I  wish  it  had  been  higher,"  she  whispered,  when 
Arthur  clasped  her  with  affectionate  solicitude  where  she 
stood  in  the  sodden  vegetation. 

"I'm  jolly  glad  it  wasn't,"  he  said.  "Now  what  are  we 
going  to  do?" 

"Why,  find  a  'bus,  of  course!"  Sylvia  said.  "And  get  as 
far  from  Hampstead  as  possible." 

"But  it's  after  twelve  o'clock,"  Arthur  objected. 
"There  won't  be  any  'buses  now.  I  don't  know  what  we're 
going  to  do.  We  can't  look  for  rooms  at  this  time  of  night." 

"We  must  just  walk  as  far  as  we  can  away  from  Hamp- 
stead," said  Sylvia,  cheerfully. 

"And  carry  our  luggage?  Supposing  a  policeman  asks 
us  where  we're  going  ?" 

"Oh,  bother  policemen!  Come  along.  You  don't  seem 
to  be  enjoying  yourself  nearly  as  much  as  I  am.  I  care  for 
nobody.  I'm  off  with  the  raggle-taggle  gipsies — oh,"  she 
lightly  sang. 

Maria  mewed  at  the  sound  of  his  mistress's  voice. 

"You're  as  bad  as  Maria,"  she  went  on,  reproachfully. 
"Look  how  nice  the  lamp-posts  look.  One,  two,  three, 
four,  five,  six,  seven,  I  can  see.  Let's  bet  how  many  lamp- 
posts we  pass  before  we're  safe  in  our  own  house." 

They  set  out  for  London  by  the  road  along  the  Heath. 
At  first  trees  overhung  the  path,  and  they  passed  pool  after 
pool  of  checkered  lamplight  that  quivered  in  the  wet 
road.  Followed  a  space  of  open  country  where  they  heard 
the  last  whispers  of  a  slight  and  desultory  wind.  Soon  they 
were  inclosed  by  mute  and  unillumined  houses  on  either 
side,  until  they  found  themselves  on  the  top  of  Haverstock 


Sylvia    Scarlett  101 

Hill,  faced  by  the  tawny  glow  of  the  London  sky,  and 
stretching  before  them  a  double  row  of  lamp-posts  innumer- 
able and  pale  that  converged  to  a  dim  point  in  the  heart  of 
the  city  below. 

"I  think  I'm  rather  frightened,"  Sylvia  said.  "Or 
perhaps  I'm  a  little  tired." 

"Shall  we  go  back?"  Arthur  suggested. 

"No,  no.  We'll  just  rest  a  moment  or  two,  and  I'll  be  all 
right."  They  sat  down  on  their  bags,  and  she  stroked 
Maria  pensively. 

Sylvia  was  relieved  when  the  silence  was  interrupted  by  a 
policeman.  She  felt  the  need  of  opposition  to  drive  away 
the  doubts  that  took  advantage  of  that  first  fatigue  to 
shake  her  purpose. 

'Now  then,  what  are  you  doing?"  he  demanded,  gruffly. 

'We're  sitting  down,"  Sylvia  informed  him. 

'Loitering  isn't  allowed  here,"  the  policeman  said. 

'Where  is  it  allowed,  please?"  she  asked,  sweetly. 

'Loitering  isn't  allowed  nowhere,"  the  policeman  de- 
clared. 

"Well,  why  did  you  say  it  wasn't  allowed  here?"  she 
continued.  "I  thought  you  were  going  to  tell  us  of  a  place 
where  it  was  allowed." 

Arthur  jogged  Sylvia's  elbow  and  whispered  to  her  not 
to  annoy  the  policeman. 

"Come  along,  now,  move  on,"  the  policeman  com- 
manded. In  order  to  emphasize  his  authority  he  flashed 
his  bull's-eye  in  Sylvia's  face.  "Where  do  you  live?"  he 
asked,  after  the  scrutiny. 

"Lillie  Road,  Fulham.  We  missed  the  last  train  from 
Hampstead,  and  we're  walking  home.  I  never  heard  of 
any  rule  against  sitting  on  one's  own  luggage  in  the  middle 
of  the  night.  I  think  you'd  better  take  us  to  the  police 
station.  We  must  rest  somewhere." 

The  policeman  looked  puzzled. 

"What  did  you  want  to  miss  your  train  for?"  he  asked. 

"We  didn't  want  to  miss  it,"  Sylvia  gently  explained. 
"We  were  very  angry  when  we  missed  it.  Come  on, 
Arthur,  I  don't  feel  tired  any  longer." 

She  got  up  and  started  off  down  Haverstock  Hill,  fol- 
lowed by  Arthur. 


102  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"I'm  sorry  you  can't  recommend  any  proper  loitering- 
places  on  the  road,"  said  Sylvia,  turning  round,  "because 
we  shall  probably  have  to  loiter  about  thirty-six  times 
before  we  get  to  Lillie  Road.  Good  night.  If  we  meet 
any  burglars  we'll  give  them  your  love  and  say  there's  a 
nice  policeman  living  on  Haverstock  Hill  who'd  like  a 
chat." 

"Suppose  he  had  run  us  in?"  Arthur  said,  when  they 
had  left  the  policeman  behind  them. 

"I  wanted  him  to  at  first,"  Sylvia  replied.  "But  after- 
ward I  thought  it  might  be  awkward  on  account  of 
Monkley's  cash-box.  I  wish  we  could  open  it  now  and  see 
how  much  there  is  inside,  but  perhaps  it  would  look  funny 
at  this  time  of  night." 

They  had  nearly  reached  the  bottom  of  Haverstock  Hill, 
and  there  were  signs  of  life  in  the  squalid  streets  they  were 
approaching. 

"I  don't  think  we  ought  to  hang  about  here,"  Arthur 
said.  "These  are  slums.  We  ought  to  be  careful;  I 
think  we  ought  to  have  waited  till  the  morning." 

"You  wouldn't  have  come,  if  we'd  waited,"  Sylvia 
maintained.  "You'd  have  been  too  worried  about  leaving 
your  mother." 

"I'm  still  worried  about  that,"  said  Arthur,  gloomily. 

"Why?  You  can  send  a  post-card  to  say  that  you're  all 
right.  Knowing  where  you  are  won't  make  up  for  your 
being  away.  In  any  case,  you'd  have  had  to  go  away  soon. 
You  couldn't  have  spent  your  whole  life  in  that  house  at 
Hampstead." 

"Well,  I  think  this  running  away  will  bring  us  bad  luck." 

Sylvia  made  a  dramatic  pause  and  dropped  her  valise  on 
the  pavement. 

"Go  home,  then.  Go  home  and  leave  me  alone.  If  you 
can't  enjoy  yourself,  I'd  rather  you  went  home.  I  can't 
bear  to  be  with  somebody  who  is  not  enjoying  himself  as 
much  as  I  am." 

"You  can't  be  enjoying  this  walking  about  all  night  with 
two  bags  and  a  cat,"  Arthur  insisted.  "  But  I'm  not  going 
home  without  you.  If  you  want  to  go  on,  I  shall  go  on, 
too.  I'm  feeling  rather  tired.  I  expect  I  shall  enjoy  my- 
self more  to-morrow," 


Sylvia    Scarlett  103 

Sylvia  picked  up  her  valise  again.  "I  hope  you  will, 
I'm  sure,"  she  said.  "You're  spoiling  the  fun  by  grum- 
bling all  the  time  like  this.  What  is  there  to  grumble  at? 
Just  a  small  bag  which  makes  your  arm  ache.  You  ought 
to  be  glad  you  haven't  got  mine  to  carry  as  well  as  your 
own." 

After  another  quarter  of  an  hour  among  the  ill-favored 
streets  Sylvia  called  a  rest;  this  time  they  withdrew  from 
the  pavement  into  the  area  of  an  unoccupied  house,  where 
they  leaned  against  the  damp  brick  wall,  quite  exhausted, 
and  heard  without  interest  the  footsteps  of  the  people  who 
went  past  above.  Maria  began  to  mew  and  Sylvia  let  her 
out  of  the  basket.  A  lean  and  amorous  tom-cat  in  pursuit 
of  love  considered  that  Maria  had  prejudiced  his  chance  of 
success,  and  their  recriminations  ended  in  a  noisy  scuffle 
during  which  the  lid  of  a  dust-bin  in  the  next  area  was  up- 
set with  a  loud  clatter;  somebody,  throwing  open  a  win- 
dow, emptied  a  utensil  partly  over  Arthur. 

" Don't  make  such  a  noise.  It  was  only  a  jug,"  Sylvia 
whispered.  "You'll  wake  up  all  the  houses." 

"It's  your  damned  cat  making  the  noise,"  Arthur  said. 
"Come  here,  you  brute." 

Maria  was  at  last  secured  and  replaced  in  his  basket,  and 
Arthur  asked  Sylvia  if  she  was  sure  it  was  only  a  jug. 

"It's  simply  beastly  in  this  area,"  he  added.  "Any- 
thing's  better  than  sitting  here." 

After  making  sure  that  nobody  was  in  sight,  they  went 
on  their  way,  though  by  now  their  legs  were  so  weary  that 
from  time  to  time  the  bags  scraped  along  the  pavement. 

"The  worst  of  it  is,"  Sylvia  sighed,  "we've  come  so  far 
now  that  it  would  be  just  as  tiring  to  go  back  to  Hamp- 
stead  as  to  go  on." 

"Oh,  you're  thinking  now  of  going  back!"  Arthur  jeered. 
"It's  a  pity  you  didn't  think  of  that  when  we  were  on 
Haverstock  Hill/; 

"I'm  not  thinking  at  all  of  going  back,"  Sylvia  snapped. 
"I'm  not  tired." 

"Oh  no,"  said  Arthur,  sarcastically.  "And  I'm  not  at 
all  wet,  really." 

They  got  more  and  more  irritable  with  each  other. 
The  bow  in  Sylvia's  hair  dropped  off,  and  with  all  the  fret- 


104  Sylvia    Scarlett 

ful  obstinacy  of  fatigue  she  would  go  wandering  back  on 
their  tracks  to  see  if  she  could  find  it;  but  the  bow  was 
lost.  At  last  they  saw  a  hansom  coming  toward  them  at  a 
walking  pace,  and  Sylvia  announced  that  they  would  ride. 

"But  where  shall  we  drive  to?"  Arthur  asked.  "We 
can't  just  get  in  and  drive  anywhere." 

"We'll  tell  him  to  go  to  Waterloo,"  said  Sylvia.  "Sta- 
tions are  always  open;  we  can  wait  there  till  the  morning 
and  then  look  for  a  house." 

She  hailed  the  cab;  with  sighs  of  relief  they  sank  back 
upon  the  seat,  exhausted.  Presently  an  odd  noise  like  a 
fishmonger's  smacking  a  cod  could  be  heard  beside  the  cab, 
and,  leaning  out  over  the  apron  to  see  what  was  the  cause  of 
it,  Arthur  was  spattered  with  mud  by  a  piece  of  the  tire 
which  was  flogging  the  road  with  each  revolution  of  the 
wheel.  The  driver  pulled  up  and  descended  from  the  box 
to  restrain  it. 

"I've  been  tying  it  up  all  day,  but  it  will  do  it,"  he  com- 
plained. "There's  nothing  to  worry  over,  but  it  fidgets 
one,  don't  it,  flapping  like  that?  I've  tied  it  up  with  string 
and  I've  tied  it  up  with  wire,  and  last  time  I  used  my  hand- 
kerchief. Now  I  suppose  it's  got  to  be  my  bootlace.  Well, 
here  goes,"  he  said,  and  with  many  grunts  he  stooped  over 
to  undo  his  lace. 

Neither  Sylvia  nor  Arthur  could  ever  say  what  occurred 
to  irritate  a  horse  that  with  equanimity  had  tolerated  the 
flapping  all  day,  but  suddenly  it  leaped  forward  at  a  canter, 
while  the  loose  piece  of  tire  slapped  the  road  with  in- 
creasing rapidity  and  noise.  The  reins  slipped  down;  and 
Sylvia,  who  had  often  been  allowed  to  drive  with  Blanche, 
managed  to  gather  them  up  and  keep  the  horse  more  or  less 
in  the  middle  of  the  road.  After  the  cab  had  traveled  about 
a  mile  the  tire  that  all  day  had  been  seeking  freedom 
achieved  its  purpose  and,  lancing  itself  before  the  vehicle 
in  a  swift  parabola,  looped  itself  round  the  ancient  ragman 
who  was  shuffling  along  the  gutter  in  pursuit  of  wealth. 
The  horse  chose  that  moment  to  stop  abruptly  and  an  un- 
pleasant encounter  with  the  ragman  seemed  inevitable. 
Already  he  was  approaching  the  cab,  waving  in  angry 
fashion  his  spiked  stick  and  swearing  in  a  bronchial  voice; 
he  stopped  his  abuse,  however,  on  perceiving  the  absence 


Sylvia    Scarlett  105 

of  the  driver,  and  muttering  to  himself:  "A  lucky  night, 
so  help  me!  A  lovely  long  strip  of  india-rubber!  Gor! 
what  a  find!"  he  turned  round  and  walked  away  as  fast 
as  he  could,  stuffing  the  tire  into  his  basket  as  he  went. 

"  I  wonder  whether  I  could  drive  the  cab  properly  if  I 
climbed  up  on  the  box,"  said  Sylvia,  thoughtfully. 

"Oh  no!  For  goodness'  sake,  don't  do  anything  of  the 
kind!"  Arthur  begged.  "Let's  get  down  while  the  beast  is 
quiet.  Come  along.  We  shall  never  be  able  to  explain  why 
we're  in  this  cab.  It's  like  a  dream." 

Sylvia  gave  way  so  far  as  not  to  mount  the  box,  but  she 
declined  to  alight,  and  insisted  they  ought  to  stay  where 
they  were  and  rest  as  long  as  they  could;  there  were  still  a 
number  of  dark  hours  before  them. 

"But  my  dear  girl,  this  beast  of  a  horse  may  start  off 
again,"  Arthur  protested. 

"Well,  what  if  it  does?"  Sylvia  said.  "We  can't  be  any 
more  lost  than  we  are  now.  I  don't  know  in  the  least  what 
part  of  London  we've  got  to." 

"I'm  sure  there's  something  the  matter  with  this  cab," 
Arthur  woefully  exclaimed. 

"There  is,"  she  agreed.  "You've  just  set  fire  to  it  with 
that  match." 

"  I'm  so  nervous,"  said  Arthur.  "  I  don't  know  what  I'm 
doing.  Phew!  what  a  stink  of  burnt  hair.  Do  let's  get 
out." 

He  stamped  on  the  smoldering  mat. 

"Shut  up,"  Sylvia  commanded.  "I'm  going  to  try  and 
have  a  sleep.  Wake  me  up  if  the  horse  tries  to  walk  into  a 
shop  or  anything." 

But  this  was  more  than  Arthur  could  stand,  and  he  shook 
her  in  desperation.  "You  sha'n't  go  to  sleep.  You  don't 
seem  to  mind  what  happens  to  us." 

"Not  a  bit,"  Sylvia  agreed.  Then  suddenly  she  sang  at 
the  top  of  her  voice,  "for  I'm  off  with  the  raggle-taggle 
gipsies-oh!" 

The  horse  at  once  trotted  forward,  and  Arthur  was  in 
despair. 

"Oh,  damn!"  he  moaned.  "Now  you've  started  that 
horrible  brute  off  again.  Whatever  made  me  come  away 
with  you?" 


io6  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"You  can  go  home  whenever  you  like,"  said  Sylvia, 
coldly. 

"What's  the  good  of  telling  me  that  when  we're  tearing 
along  in  a  cab  without  a  driver?"  Arthur  bewailed. 

"We're  not  tearing  along,"  Sylvia  contradicted.  "And 
I'm  driving.  I  expect  the  horse  will  go  back  to  its  stable  if 
we  don't  interfere  with  him  too  much." 

"Who  wants  to  interfere  with  the  brute?  Oh, listen  to 
that  wheel.  I'm  sure  it's  coming  off." 

"Here's  a  cab  shelter,"  Sylvia  said,  encouragingly. 
"I'm  going  to  try  and  pull  up." 

Luckily  the  horse  was  ready  enough  to  stop,  and  both  of 
them  got  out.  Sylvia  walked  without  hesitation  into  the 
shelter,  followed  by  Arthur  with  the  bags.  There  were 
three  or  four  cabmen  inside,  eating  voluptuously  in  an 
atmosphere  of  tobacco  smoke,  steam,  and  burnt  grease. 
She  explained  to  them  about  the  cab's  running  away,  was 
much  gratified  by  the  attention  her  story  secured,  and 
learned  that  it  was  three  o'clock  and  that  she  was  in  Somers 
Town. 

"Where  are  you  going,  missie?"  one  of  the  cabmen 
asked. 

"We  were  going  to  Waterloo,  but  we  don't  mind  staying 
here,"  Sylvia  said.  "My  brother  is  rather  tired  and  my 
cat  would  like  some  milk." 

"What  did  the  driver  look  like,  missie?"  one  of  the  men 
asked. 

Sylvia  described  him  vaguely  as  rather  fat,  a  description 
which  would  have  equally  suited  any  of  the  present  com- 
pany, with  the  exception  of  the  attendant  tout,  who  was 
exceptionally  lean. 

"I  wonder  if  it  'ud  be  Bill?"  said  one  of  the  cabmen. 

"I  shouldn't  be  surprised." 

"Wasn't  Bill  grumbling  about  his  tire  this  morning?" 

"I  don't  know  if  it  was  his  tire;  he  was  grumbling 
about  something." 

"I  reckon  it's  Bill.  Did  you  notice  if  the  gentleman  as 
drove  you  had  a  swelling  behind  his  ear?"  asked  the  man 
who  had  first  propounded  the  theory  of  the  missing  driver's 
being  Bill. 

"I  didn't  notice,"  said  Sylvia. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  107 

"About  the  size  of  a  largish  potato?"  the  theorist 
pressed,  encouragingly. 

"I'm  afraid  I  didn't  notice,"  said  Sylvia. 

"It  must  be  Bill,"  the  theorist  decided.  "Any  one 
wouldn't  notice  that  swelling  in  the  dark,  'specially  if  Bill 
had  his  collar  turned  up." 

"He  did  have  his  collar  turned  up,"  Arthur  put  in. 

"There  you  are,"  said  the  theorist.  "What  did  I  tell 
you  ?  Of  course  it's  Bill.  No  one  wouldn't  see  his  swelling 
with  his  coat  turned  up.  Poor  old  Bill,  he  won't  half  swear 
when  he  has  to  walk  home  to-night.  Here,  Joe,"  he  went 
on,  addressing  the  attending  tout.  "Give  Bill's  horse  a 
bit  of  a  feed." 

Sylvia  and  Arthur  were  given  large  slices  of  bread  and 
butter  and  large  cups  of  coffee;  Maria  had  a  saucer  of  milk. 
Life  was  looking  much  more  cheerful.  Presently  a  burly 
cabman  appeared  in  the  entrance  of  the  shelter  and  was 
greeted  witn  shouts  of  merriment. 

"What  ho,  Bill,  old  cock!  Lost  your  ruddy  cab,  old 
sporty?  Lor!  we  haven't  half  laughed  to  think  of  you 
having  to  use  your  bacon  and  eggs  to  get  here.  I  reckon 
you  didn't  half  swear." 

"Who  are  you  getting  at,  you  blinking  set  of  mugs? 
Who's  lost  his  ruddy  cab?"  demanded  Bill. 

"That's  not  the  driver,"  Sylvia  said. 

"I  thought  it  couldn't  be  Bill,"  said  the  theorist  quickly. 
"As  soon  as  I  heard  she  never  noticed  that  lump  behind  his 
ear,  I  thought  it  wasn't  Bill." 

"Here,  less  of  it,  you  and  your  lumps  behind  the  ear," 
said  Bill,  aggressively.  "You'll  have  a  blurry  lump  behin* 
your  own  blurry  ear,  Fred  Organ,  before  you  knows  where 
you  are." 

Sylvia  could  not  refrain  from  observing  the  famous  lump 
with  a  good  deal  of  curiosity,  and  she  wondered  how  any 
one  could  ever  have  supposed  it  might  be  unnoticed.  She 
would  have  described  it  as  more  like  a  beet  root  than  a 
potato,  she  thought. 

A  long  discussion  about  the  future  of  the  driverless  cab 
ensued;  finally  it  was  decided  that  Joe  the  tout  should 
lead  it  to  the  police  station  if  it  were  not  claimed  by  day- 
light. The  company  then  turned  to  the  discussion  of  the 


io8  Sylvia    Scarlett 

future  of  the  abandoned  fares.  Sylvia  had  by  this  time 
evolved  an  elaborate  tale  of  running  away  from  a  step- 
father whose  conduct  to  Arthur,  herself,  and  Maria  had 
been  extremely  brutal. 

"Knocked  the  cat  about,  did  he?"  said  the  theorist, 
whose  name  was  Fred  Organ.  "I  never  could  abide  people 
as  ill-treated  dumb  animals." 

Sylvia  went  on  to  explain  that  they  had  intended  to 
throw  themselves  on  the  mercy  of  an  aunt  who  lived  at 
Dover,  and  with  that  intention  had  been  bound  for  Water- 
loo when  they  lost  their  driver.  When  she  was  told  that 
they  were  going  to  the  wrong  station  for  Dover,  she  began 
to  express  fears  of  the  reception  her  aunt  might  accord 
them.  Did  any  one  present  know  where  they  could  find 
lodgings,  for  which,  of  course,  they  would  pay,  because 
their  mother  had  provided  them  with  the  necessary  money. 

"That's  a  mother  all  over,"  said  Fred  Organ,  with 
enthusiastic  sentiment.  "Ain't  it,  boys?  Ah,  I  wish  I 
hadn't  lost  my  poor  old  mother." 

Various  suggestions  about  rooms  were  made,  but  finally 
Fred  Organ  was  so  much  moved  by  the  emotional  details 
with  which  Sylvia  continually  supplemented  her  tale  that 
he  offered  to  give  them  lodgings  in  his  own  house  near 
Finsbury  Park.  Sylvia  would  have  preferred  a  suburb  that 
was  barred  to  Monkley,  but  she  accepted  the  offer  because, 
with  Arthur  turning  out  so  inept  at  adventure,  it  seemed 
foolish  to  take  any  more  risks  that  night. 

Fred  Organ  had  succeeded  to  the  paternal  house  and 
hansom  about  two  years  before.  He  was  now  twenty-six, 
but  his  corpulence  made  him  appear  older;  for  the  chubby 
smoothness  of  youth  had  vanished  with  continual  exposure 
to  the  weather,  leaving  behind  many  folds  and  furrows  in 
his  large  face.  Mr.  Organ,  senior,  had  bought  No.  53 
Colonial  Terrace  by  instalments,  the  punctual  payment  of 
which  had  worried  him  so  much  as  probably  to  shorten  his 
life,  the  last  one  having  been  paid  just  before  his  death. 
He  had  only  a  week  or  two  for  the  enjoyment  of  possession, 
which  was  as  well;  for  the  house  that  had  cost  its  owner  so 
much  effort  to  obtain  was  nearly  as  ripe  for  dissolution  as 
himself,  and  the  maintenance  of  it  in  repair  seemed  likely 
to  cause  Fred  Organ  as  much  financial  stress  in  the  future 


Sylvia    Scarlett  109 

as  the  original  purchase  had  caused  his  father  in  the 
past. 

So  much  of  his  history  did  Fred  Organ  give  them  while 
he  was  stabling  his  horse,  before  he  could  introduce  them 
to  his  inheritance.  It  was  five  o'clock  of  a  chill  February 
morning,  and  the  relief  of  finding  herself  safely  under  a 
roof  after  such  a  tiring  and  insecure  night  compensated 
Sylvia  for  the  impression  of  unutterable  dreariness  that 
Colonial  Terrace  first  made  upon  her  mind,  a  dreariness 
quite  out  of  accord  with  the  romantic  beginning  to  the  life 
of  independence  of  which  she  had  dreamed.  They  could 
not  go  to  bed  when  they  reached  the  house,  because  Fred 
Organ,  master  though  he  was,  doubted  if  it  would  be  wise 
to  wake  up  his  sister  to  accommodate  the  guests. 

"Not  that  she'd  have  any  call  to  make  a  fuss,"  he  ob- 
served, "because  if  I  says  a  thing  in  No.  53,  no  one  hasn't 
got  the  right  to  object.  Still,  I'd  rather  you  got  a  nice  first 
impression  of  my  sister  Edith.  Well,  make  yourselves  at 
home.  I'll  rout  round  and  get  the  kitchen  fire  going." 

Fred  routed  round  with  such  effect  that  he  woke  his 
sister,  who  began  to  scream  from  the  landing  above: 

"Hube!  Get  up,  you  great  coward!  There's  somebody 
breaking  in  at  the  back.  Get  up,  Hube,  and  fetch  a  police- 
man before  we're  both  murdered." 

"It's  only  me,  Ede,"  Fred  called  out.  "Keep  your  hair 
on." 

When  Sylvia  saw  Edith  Organ's  curl-papers  she  thought 
the  last  injunction  was  rather  funny.  Explanations  were 
soon  given  and  Edith  was  so  happy  to  find  her  alarm  un- 
necessary that  she  was  as  pleasant  as  possible  and  even 
invited  Sylvia  to  come  and  share  her  bed  and  sleep  late 
into  the  morning;  whereupon  Fred  Organ  invited  Arthur  to 
share  his  bed,  which  Arthur  firmly  declined  to  do,  notwith- 
standing Sylvia's  frown. 

"Well,  you  can't  go  to  bed  with  the  girls,"  said  Fred. 

"Oh,  Fred,  you  are  a  ...  Oh,  he  is  a  ...  Oh, 
isn't  he?  Oh,  I  never.  Fancy!  What  a  thing  to  say! 
There!  Well!  Who  ever  did?  I'm  sure.  What  a  remark 
to  pass!"  Edith  exclaimed,  quite  incoherent  from  em- 
barrassment, pleasure,  and  sleep. 

"Where's  Hube?"  Fred  asked. 


no  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Oh,  Hube!"  snapped  Edith.  "He's  well  underneath 
the  bedclothes.  Trust  Hube  for  that.  Nothing  'd  get  him 
out  of  bed  except  an  earthquake." 

"Wouldn't  it,  then?"  said  a  sleek  voice,  and  Hube  him- 
self, an  extremely  fat  young  man  in  a  trailing  nightgown, 
appeared  in  the  doorway. 

"You  wouldn't  think  he  was  only  nineteen,  would  you?" 
said  Fred,  proudly. 

"Nice  noise  to  kick  up  in  the  middle  of  the  night," 
Hubert  grumbled.  "I  dreamt  the  house  was  falling  down 
on  top  of  me." 

"And  it  will,  too,"  Fred  prophesied,  "if  I  can't  soon 
scrape  together  some  money  for  repairs.  There's  a  crack  as 
wide  as  the  strand  down  the  back." 

Sylvia  wondered  how  so  rickety  a  house  was  able  to 
withstand  the  wear  and  tear  of  such  a  fat  family  when 
they  all,  with  the  exception  of  Arthur,  who  lay  down  on 
the  kitchen  table,  went  creaking  up-stairs  to  bed. 

The  examination  of  Monkley's  cash-box  produced  £35; 
Sylvia  felt  ineffably  rich,  so  rich  that  she  offered  to  lend 
Fred  Organ  the  money  he  wanted  to  repair  his  property. 
He  accepted  the  offer  in  the  spirit  in  which  it  was  made,  as 
he  said,  and  Sylvia,  whom  contact  with  Monkley  had  left 
curiously  uncynical,  felt  that  she  had  endeared  herself  to 
Fred  Organ  for  a  long  time  to  come.  She  was  given  a 
room  of  her  own  at  No.  53,  for  which  she  was  glad,  be- 
cause sleeping  with  Edith  had  been  rather  like  eating 
scented  cornflour  pudding,  a  combination  of  the  flabby 
with  the  stuffy  that  had  never  appeared  to  her  taste. 
Arthur  was  given  the  choice  of  sleeping  with  Hubert  or  in 
the  bath,  and  he  chose  the  latter  without  a  moment's 
hesitation. 

Relations  between  Arthur  and  Hubert  had  been  strained 
ever  since.  Hubert  offered  Arthur  a  bite  from  an  apple  he 
was  munching,  which  was  refused  with  a  too  obvious 
disgust. 

"Go  on,  what  do  you  take  me  for?  Eve?"  asked  Hubert, 
indignantly.  "It  won't  poison  you." 

The  strain  was  not  relaxed  by  Hubert's  obvious  fondness 
for  Sylvia. 

"I  thought  when  I  came  away  with  you,"  Arthur  said, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  in 

"that  we  were  going  to  live  by  ourselves  and  earn  our  own 
living;  instead  of  which  you  let  that  fat  brute  hang  around 
you  all  day." 

"I  can't  be  always  rude  to  him,"  Sylvia  explained. 
"He's  very  good-natured." 

"Do  you  call  it  good-natured  to  turn  the  tap  on  me 
when  I'm  lying  in  bed?"  Arthur  demanded. 

"I  expect  he  only  did  it  for  fun." 

"Fun!"  said  Arthur,  darkly.  "I  shall  hit  him  one  of 
these  days." 

Arthur  did  hit  him;  but  Hubert,  with  all  his  fat,  hit 
harder  than  he,  and  Arthur  never  tried  again.  Sylvia 
found  herself  growing  very  tired  of  him;  the  universal 
censure  upon  his  namby-pambyness  was  beginning  to  react 
upon  her.  The  poetical  youth  of  Hampstead  Heath  seemed 
no  longer  so  poetical  in  Colonial  Terrace.  Yet  she  did  not 
want  to  quarrel  with  him  finally,  for  in  a  curious  way  he 
represented  to  her  a  link  with  what  she  still  paradoxically 
spoke  of  as  home.  Sylvia  had  really  had  a  great  affection 
for  Monkley,  which  made  her  hate  him  more  for  what  he 
had  tried  to  do.  Yet,  though  she  hated  him  and  though 
the  notion  of  being  with  him  again  made  her  shudder,  she 
could  not  forget  that  he  had  known  her  father,  who  was 
bound  up  with  the  memory  of  her  mother  and  of  all  the 
past  that,  being  so  irreparably  over,  was  now  strangely 
cherished.  Sylvia  felt  that,  were  Arthur  to  go,  she  would 
indeed  find  herself  alone,  in  that  state  which  first  she  had 
dreaded,  then  desired,  and  now  once  again  dreaded,  not- 
withstanding her  bold  conceptions  of  independence  and 
belief  in  her  own  ability  to  determine  the  manner  of  life  she 
wished.  There  were  times  when  she  felt  what  almost 
amounted  to  a  passionate  hatred  of  Colonial  Terrace,  which 
had  brought  her  freedom,  indeed,  but  the  freedom  of  a 
world  too  gray  to  make  freedom  worth  possessing.  She 
was  fond  of  Fred  Organ,  and  she  fancied  that  he  would 
have  liked  formally  to  adopt  her;  yet  the  idea  of  being 
adopted  by  him  somehow  repelled  her.  She  was  fond  of 
Edith  Organ  too,  but  no  fonder  than  she  had  been  of 
Clara;  Edith  seemed  to  have  less  to  tell  her  about  life 
than  Clara,  perhaps  because  she  was  older  now  and  had 
read  so  many  books.  As  for  Hubert,  who  claimed  to  be  in 

8 


ii2  Sylvia    Scarlett 

love  with  her,  he  existed  about  the  house  like  a  large  over- 
fed dog;  that  was  all,  that  and  his  capacity  for  teasing 
Arthur,  which  amused  her. 

Everything  about  this  escapade  was  so  different  from 
what  she  had  planned.  Always  in  her  dreams  there  had 
been  a  room  with  a  green  view  over  trees  or  a  silver  view 
over  water,  and  herself  encouraging  some  one  (she  supposed 
it  must  have  been  Arthur,  though  she  could  hardly  believe 
this  when  she  looked  at  him  now)  to  perform  the  kind  of 
fantastic  deeds  that  people  performed  in  books.  Surely 
some  books  were  true.  Looking  back  on  her  old  fancies, 
Sylvia  came  to  the  conclusion  that  she  had  always  pictured 
herself  married  to  Arthur;  yet  how  ridiculous  such  an 
idea  now  seemed.  He  had  always  talked  with  regret  of  the 
adventures  that  were  no  longer  possible  in  dull  modern 
days;  but  when  the  very  small  adventure  of  being  in  a 
runaway  cab  had  happened,  how  miserably  Arthur  had 
failed  to  rise  to  the  occasion,  and  now  here  he  was  loafing 
in  Colonial  Terrace.  Hubert  had  secured  a  position  in  a 
bookshop  near  Finsbury  Park  railway  station,  which  he 
had  forfeited  very  soon  afterward,  but  only  because  he  had 
made  a  habit  of  borrowing  for  Sylvia's  perusal  the  books 
which  customers  had  bought,  and  of  sending  them  on  to 
their  owners  two  or  three  days  later.  To  be  sure,  they  had 
nearly  all  been  very  dull  books  of  a  religious  bent,  but  in 
such  a  district  as  Finsbury  Park  what  else  could  be  ex- 
pected? At  least  Hubert  had  sacrificed  something  for  her. 
Arthur  had  done  nothing;  even  when  Fred  Organ,  to  please 
Sylvia,  had  offered  to  teach  him  to  drive  a  hansom,  he  had 
refused  to  learn. 

One  day  Edith  Organ  announced  that  there  was  to  be  a 
supper-party  at  a  public  house  in  Harringay  where  one  of 
the  barmaids  was  a  friend  of  hers.  It  seemed  that  Mrs. 
Hartle,  the  proprietress,  had  recently  had  cause  to  rejoice 
over  a  victory,  but  whether  it  was  domestic,  political,  or 
professional  Edith  was  unable  to  remember;  at  any  rate,  a 
jolly  evening  could  be  counted  upon. 

"You  must  wear  that  new  white  dress,  Syl;  it  suits  you  a 
treat,"  Edith  advised.  "I  was  told  only  to  bring  one 
gentleman,  and  I  think  it's  Artie's  turn." 

"Why?"  Hubert  demanded,  fiercely. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  113 

"Oh,  Hube,  you  know  you  don't  like  parties.  You 
always  want  to  go  home  early,  and  I'm  out  to  enjoy  myself 
and  I  don't  care  who  knows  it." 

Sylvia  suspected  that  Edith's  real  reason  for  wishing 
Arthur  to  be  the  guest  was  his  greater  presentableness;  she 
had  often  heard  her  praise  Arthur's  appearance  while  depre- 
cating his  namby-pamby  manner;  however,  for  a  party  like 
this,  of  which  Edith  was  proclaiming  the  extreme  select- 
ness,  that  might  be  considered  an  advantage.  Mrs.  Hartle 
was  reputed  to  be  a  woman  to  whom  the  least  vulgarity 
was  disgusting. 

"She's  highly  particular,  they  tell  me,  not  to  say  stand- 
offish. You  know,  doesn't  like  to  make  herself  cheap. 
Well,  I  don't  blame  her.  She's  thought  a  lot  of  round  here. 
She  had  some  trouble  with  her  husband — her  second 
husband  that  is — and  everybody  speaks  very  highly  of 
the  dignified  way  in  which  she  made  him  sling  his  hook 
out  of  it." 

"I  don't  think  so  much  of  her,"  Hubert  grunted.  "I 
went  into  the  saloon-bar  once,  and  she  said,  'Here,  my 
man,  the  public  bar  is  the  bother  side.'  'Oh,  his  it?'  I  said. 
'Well,  I  can't  round  the  corner  for  the  crowd,'  I  said, 
'listening  to  your  old  man  singing  "At  Trinity  Church  I 
met  my  doom"  on  the  pavement  outside.'  She  didn't  half 
color  up,  I  can  tell  you.  So  he  was  singing,  too,  fit  to  give 
any  one  the  earache  to  listen  to  him.  I  don't  want  to  go  to 
her  supper-party." 

"Well,  if  you're  not  going,  you  needn't  be  so  nasty  about 
it,  Hube.  I'd  take  you  if  I  could." 

"I  wouldn't  come,"  Hubert  declared.  "Not  if  Mrs. 
Hartle  was  to  go  down  on  her  knees  and  ask  me  to  come. 
So  shut  your  mouth." 

The  chief  event  of  the  party  for  Sylvia  was  her  meeting 
with  Danny  Lewis,  who  paid  her  a  good  deal  of  attention 
at  supper  and  danced  with  her  all  the  time  afterward. 
Sylvia  was  grateful  to  him  for  his  patience  with  her  bad 
dancing  at  first,  and  she  learned  so  quickly  under  his 
direction  that  when  it  was  time  to  go  she  really  danced 
rather  well.  Sylvia's  new  friend  saw  them  back  to  Colonial 
Terrace  and  invited  himself  to  tea  the  following  afternoon. 
Edith,  who  could  never  bear  the  suggestion  of  impoliteness, 


ii4  Sylvia    Scarlett 

assured  him  that  he  would  be  most  welcome,  though  she 
confided  in  Sylvia,  as  they  went  up  to  bed,  that  she  could 
not  feel  quite  sure  about  him.  Sylvia  insisted  he  was 
everything  he  should  be,  and  praised  his  manners  so  highly 
that  Edith  humbly  promised  to  believe  in  his  perfection. 
Arthur  went  up-stairs  and  slammed  his  door  without  say- 
ing good  night. 

The  next  morning,  a  morning  of  east  wind,  Arthur 
attacked  Sylvia  on  the  subject  of  her  behavior  the  night 
before. 

"Look  here,"  he  opened,  very  grandly,  "if  you  prefer 
to  spend  the  evenings  waltzing  with  dirty  little  Jews,  I 
won't  stand  it." 

Sylvia  regarded  him  disdainfully. 

"Do  you  hear?"  repeated  Arthur.  "I  won't  stand  it. 
It's  bad  enough  with  that  great  hulking  lout  here,  but 
when  it  comes  to  a  greasy  Jew  I've  had  enough." 

"So  have  I,"  Sylvia  said.  "You'd  better  go  back  to 
Hampstead." 

"I'm  going  to-day,"  Arthur  declared,  and  waited 
pathetically  for  Sylvia  to  protest.  She  was  silent.  Then 
he  tried  to  be  affectionate,  and  vowed  he  had  not  meant  a 
word  he  said,  but  she  brushed  away  his  tentative  caress  and 
meek  apology. 

"I  don't  want  to  talk  to  you  any  more,"  she  said. 
"There  are  lots  of  things  I  could  tell  you;  but  you'll  always 
be  unhappy  anyway,  because  you're  soft  and  silly,  so  I 
won't.  You'll  be  home  for  dinner,"  she  added. 

When  Arthur  was  ready  to  start  he  looked  so  forlorn 
that  Sylvia  was  sorry  for  him. 

"Here,  take  Maria,"  she  said,  impulsively.  "He'll 
remind  you  of  me." 

"I  don't  want  anything  to  remind  me  of  you,"  said 
Arthur  in  a  hollow  voice,  "but  I'll  take  Maria." 

That  afternoon  Danny  Lewis,  wearing  a  bright  orange  tie 
and  a  flashing  ring,  came  to  visit  Sylvia.  She  had  already 
told  him  a  good  deal  about  herself  the  night  before,  and 
when  now  she  told  him  how  she  had  dismissed  Arthur  he 
suggested  that  Monkley  would  probably  find  out  where  she 
was  and  come  to  take  her  back.  Sylvia  turned  pale;  the 
possibility  of  Arthur's  betrayal  of  her  address  had  never 


Sylvia    Scarlett  115 

struck  her.  She  cried  in  a  panic  that  she  must  leave  Fins- 
bury  Park  at  once.  Danny  offered  to  find  her  a  room. 

"I've  got  no  money.  I  spent  all  I  had  left  on  new 
frocks,"  she  bewailed. 

"That's  all  right,  kid;  bring  the  frocks  along  with  you. 
I've  got  plenty  of  money." 

Sylvia  packed  in  a  frenzy  of  haste,  expecting  every 
moment  to  hear  the  bell  ring  and  see  Monkley  waiting 
grimly  outside;  his  cold  eyes,  when  her  imagination  re- 
called them,  made  her  shiver  with  fear.  When  they  got 
down-stairs  Hubert,  who  was  in  the  passage,  asked  where 
she  was  going,  and  she  told  him  that  she  was  going  away. 

"Not  with  that — "  said  Hubert,  barring  the  way  to 
the  front  door. 

Danny  did  not  hesitate;  his  arm  shot  out,  and  Hubert 
went  over,  bringing  down  the  hat-stand  with  a  crash. 

"Quick,  quick!"  cried  Sylvia,  in  exultation  at  being  with 
some  one  who  could  act.  "  Edie's  gone  round  to  the  baker's 
to  fetch  some  crumpets  for  tea.  Let's  go  before  she  gets 
back." 

They  hurried  out.  The  wind  had  fallen.  Colonial 
Terrace  looked  very  gray,  very  quiet,  very  long  in  the 
bitter  March  air.  Danny  Lewis  with  his  orange  tie  prom- 
ised a  richer,  warmer  life  beyond  these  ridiculous  little 
houses  that  imitated  one  another. 


CHAPTER  V 

DANNY  LEWIS  took  Sylvia  to  an  eating-house  in 
Euston  Road  kept  by  a  married  couple  called  Conner. 
Here  everything — the  meat,  the  pies,  the  butter,  the 
streaky  slabs  of  marble,  the  fly-blown  face  of  the  weary 
clock,  the  sawdust  sprinkled  on  the  floor,  the  cane-seated 
chairs — combined  to  create  an  effect  of  greasy  pallor  that 
extended  even  to  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Conner  themselves,  who 
seemed  to  have  acquired  the  nature  of  their  environment. 
Sylvia  shrank  from  their  whitish  arms  bare  to  the  elbow 
and  glistering  with  fats,  and  from  their  faces,  which  seemed 
to  her  like  bladders  of  lard,  especially  Mrs.  Conner's, 
who  wore  on  the  top  of  her  head  a  knob  of  dank  etiolated 
hair.  In  such  an  atmosphere  Danny  Lewis  with  his 
brilliant  tie  and  green  beaver  hat  acquired  a  richness  of 
personality  that  quite  overpowered  Sylvia's  judgment  and 
preserved  the  condition  of  abnormal  excitement  set  up  by 
the  rapidity  and  completeness  with  which  this  time  she  had 
abandoned  herself  to  independence. 

There  was  a  brief  conversation  between  Danny  and  the 
Gonners,  after  which  Mr.  Conner  returned  to  his  task  of 
cutting  some  very  fat  bacon  into  rashers  and  Mrs.  Conner 
held  up  the  flap  of  the  counter  for  Sylvia  and  Danny  to 
pass  up-stairs  through  the  back  of  the  shop.  For  one 
moment  Sylvia  hesitated  when  the  flap  dropped  back  into 
its  place,  for  it  seemed  to  make  dangerously  irrevocable  her 
admittance  to  the  unknown  house  above;  Danny  saw  her 
hesitation  and  with  a  word  or  two  of  encouragement 
checked  her  impulse  to  go  no  farther.  Mrs.  Conner  led 
the  way  up-stairs  and  showed  them  into  a  bedroom  pre- 
maturely darkened  by  coarse  lace  curtains  that  shut  out  the 
fading  daylight.  Sylvia  had  a  vague  impression  of  too 
much  furniture,  which  was  confirmed  when  Mrs.  Conner 
lit  a  gas-jet  over  the  mantelpiece;  she  looked  round  dis- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  117 

tastefully  at  the  double-bed  pushed  against  the  wall,  at  the 
crimson  vases  painted  with  butterflies,  at  the  faded  oleo- 
graph of  two  children  on  the  edge  of  a  precipice  with  a 
guardian  angel  behind  them,  whose  face  had  at  some  time 
been  eaten  away  by  mice.  There  was  a  short  silence,  only 
broken  by  Mrs.  Conner's  whispering  breath. 

"We  shall  be  all  right  here,  kid,  eh?"  exclaimed  Danny, 
in  a  tone  that  was  at  once  suave  and  boisterous. 

"What's  your  room  like?"  Sylvia  asked. 

He  looked  at  her  a  moment,  seemed  about  to  speak, 
thought  better  of  it,  and  turned  to  Mrs.  Conner,  who  told 
Danny  that  he  could  have  the  front  room  as  well  if  he 
wanted  it;  they  moved  along  the  passage  to  inspect  this 
room,  which  was  much  larger  and  better  lighted  than  the 
other  and  was  pleasantly  filled  with  the  noise  of  traffic. 
Sylvia  immediately  declared  that  she  preferred  to  be  here. 

"So  I'm  to  have  the  rabbit-hutch,"  said  Danny,  laughing 
easily.  "Trust  a  woman  to  have  her  own  way!  That's 
right,  isn't  it,  Mrs.  Conner?" 

Mrs.  Conner  stared  at  Sylvia  a  moment,  and  murmured 
that  she  had  long  ago  forgotten  what  she  wanted,  but  that, 
anyway,  for  her  one  thing  was  the  same  as  another,  which 
Sylvia  was  very  ready  to  believe. 

When  Mrs.  Conner  had  left  the  room,  Danny  told  Sylvia 
that  he  must  go  and  get  a  few  things  together  from  his  flat 
in  Shaftsbury  Avenue,  and  asked  if  she  would  wait  till 
he  came  back. 

"Of  course  I'll  wait,"  she  told  him.  "Do  you  think  I 
want  to  run  away  twice  in  one  day?" 

Danny  still  hesitated,  and  she  wondered  why  he  should 
expect  her,  who  was  so  much  used  to  being  left  alone,  to 
mind  waiting  for  him  an  hour  or  two. 

"We  might  go   to   the  Mo   to-night,"    he   suggested. 

She  looked  blank. 

"The  Middlesex,"  he  explained.  "It's  a  music-hall. 
Be  a  good  girl  while  I'm  out.  I'll  bring  you  back  some 
chocolates." 

He  seemed  anxious  to  retain  her  with  the  hint  of  pleas- 
ures that  were  in  his  power  to  confer;  it  made  Sylvia 
impatient  that  he  should  rely  on  them  rather  than  upon 
her  capacity  for  knowing  her  own  mind. 


u8  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"I  may  be  young,"  she  said,  "but  I  do  know  what  I 
want.  I'm  not  like  that  woman  down-stairs." 

"And  you  know  how  to  make  other  people  want,  eh?" 
Danny  muttered.  He  took  a  step  forward,  and  Sylvia 
hoped  he  was  not  going  to  try  to  kiss  her — she  felt  dis- 
inclined at  this  moment  for  a  long  explanation — but  he 
went  off,  whistling. 

For  a  long  time  Sylvia  stood  by  the  window,  lo  king 
down  at  the  traffic  and  the  lights  coming  out  one  by  one 
in  the  windows  opposite.  She  hoped  that  Danny  would  not 
end  like  Monkley,  and  she  determined  to  be  prompt  in 
checking  the  first  signs  of  his  doing  so.  Standing  here  in 
this  room,  that  was  now  dark  except  for  the  faint  transitory 
shadows  upon  the  walls  and  ceiling  of  lighted  vehicles 
below,  Sylvia's  thoughts  went  back  to  the  time  she  had 
spent  with  Blanche.  It  seemed  to  her  that  then  she  had 
been  wiser  than  she  was  now,  for  all  the  books  she  had  read 
since;  or  was  it  that  she  was  growing  up  and  becoming  an 
actress  in  scenes  that  formerly  she  had  regarded  with  the 
secure  aloofness  of  a  child  ? 

"I'm  not  innocent,"  she  said  to  herself.  "I  know  every- 
thing that  can  be  known.  But  yet  when  Monkley  tried  to 
do  that  I  was  horrified.  I  felt  sick  and  frightened  and 
angry,  oh,  dreadfully  angry!  Yet  when  Blanche  behaved 
as  she  did  I  did  not  mind  at  all;  I  used  to  encourage  her. 
Oh,  why  am  I  not  a  boy?  If  I  were  a  boy,  I  would  show 
people  that  making  love  isn't  really  a  bit  necessary.  Yet 
sometimes  I  liked  Arthur  to  make  love  to  me.  I  can't  make 
myself  out.  I  think  I  must  be  what  people  call  an  excep- 
tional person.  I  hope  Danny  won't  make  love  to  me.  But 
I  feel  he  will;  and  if  he  does  I  shall  kill  myself;  I  can't 

Jo  on  living  like  this  with  everybody  making  love  to  me. 
'm  not  like  Blanche  or  Mabel;  I  don't  like  it.  How  I 
used  to  hate  Mabel!  Shall  I  ever  get  like  her?  Oh,  I 
wish,  I  wish,  I  wish  I  were  a  boy.  I  don't  believe  Danny 
will  be  any  better  than  Jimmy  was.  Yet  he  doesn't 
frighten  me  so  much.  He  doesn't  seem  so  much  there  as 
Jimmy  was.  But  if  he  does  make  love  to  me,  it  will  be 
more  dangerous.  How  shall  I  ever  escape  from  here? 
I'm  sure  Mrs.  Conner  will  never  lift  the  flap." 

Sylvia  began  to  be  obsessed  by  that  flap,  and  the  notion 


Sylvia    Scarlett  119 

of  it  wrought  upon  her  fancy  to  such  an  extent  that  she 
was  impelled  to  go  down-stairs  and  see  if  the  way  out  was 
open  or  shut,  excusing  her  abrupt  appearance  by  asking  for 
a  box  of  matches.  There  were  two  or  three  people  eating 
at  the  white  tables,  who  eyed  her  curiously;  she  wondered 
what  they  would  have  done  if  she  had  suddenly  begged 
their  help.  She  was  vexed  with  herself  for  giving  way  to 
her  nerves  like  this,  and  she  went  up-stairs  again  with  a 
grand  resolve  to  be  very  brave.  She  even  challenged  her 
terrors  by  going  into  that  bedroom  behind  and  contending 
with  its  oppressiveness.  So  successful  was  she  in  calming 
her  overwrought  nerves  that,  when  Danny  suddenly  came 
back  and  found  her  in  his  bedroom,  she  was  no  longer 
afraid;  she  looked  at  him  there  in  the  doorway,  wearing 
now  a  large  tie  of  pale-blue  silk,  as  she  would  have  looked 
at  any  brigand  in  an  opera.  When  he  presented  her  with  a 
large  box  of  chocolates  she  laughed.  He  wondered  why; 
she  said  it  was  she  who  ought  to  give  him  chocolates,  which 
left  him  blank.  She  tried  to  explain  her  impression  of  him 
as  a  brigand,  and  he  asked  her  if  she  meant  that  he  looked 
like  an  actor. 

"Yes,  that's  what  I  mean,"  she  said,  impatiently,  though 
she  meant  nothing  of  the  kind. 

Danny  seemed  gratified  as  by  a  compliment  and  said 
that  he  was  often  mistaken  for  an  actor;  he  supposed  it 
was  his  hair. 

They  dined  at  a  restaurant  in  Soho,  where  Sylvia  was 
conscious  of  arousing  a  good  deal  of  attention;  afterward 
they  went  to  the  Middlesex  music-hall,  but  she  felt  very 
tired,  and  did  not  enjoy  it  so  much  as  she  expected. 
Moreover,  Danny  irritated  her  by  sucking  his  teeth  with 
an  air  of  importance  all  through  the  evening. 

For  a  fortnight  Danny  treated  Sylvia  with  what  was 
almost  a  luxurious  consideration.  She  was  never  really 
taken  in  by  it,  but  she  submitted  so  willingly  to  being 
spoiled  that,  as  she  told  herself,  she  could  hardly  blame 
Danny  for  thinking  he  was  fast  making  himself  indispen- 
sable to  her  happiness.  He  was  very  anxious  for  her  to  lead 
a  lazy  existence,  encouraged  her  to  lie  in  bed  the  whole 
morning,  fed  her  with  chocolates,  and  tried  to  cultivate  in 
her  a  habit  of  supposing  that  it  was  impossible  to  go  any- 


120  Sylvia    Scarlett 

where  without  driving  in  a  hansom;  he  also  used  to  buy 
her  brightly  colored  blouses  and  scarves,  which  she  used 
to  wear  out  of  politeness,  for  they  gave  her  very  little  pleas- 
ure. He  flattered  her  consistently,  praising  her  cleverness 
and  comparing  her  sense  of  humor  with  that  of  other 
women  always  to  their  disadvantage.  He  told  stories  very 
well,  particularly  those  against  his  own  race;  and  though 
Sylvia  was  a  little  scornful  of  this  truckling  self-mockery, 
she  could  not  help  laughing  at  the  stories.  Sylvia  realized 
by  the  contempt  with  which  Danny  referred  to  women 
that  his  victories  had  usually  been  gained  very  easily,  and 
she  was  much  on  her  guard.  Encouraged,  however,  by  the 
way  in  which  Sylvia  seemed  to  enjoy  the  superficial 
pleasures  he  provided  for  her,  Danny  soon  attempted  to 
bestow  his  favors  as  he  bestowed  his  chocolates.  Sylvia, 
who  never  feared  Danny  personally  as  she  had  feared 
Monkley,  repulsed  him,  yet  not  so  firmly  as  she  would  have 
done  had  not  her  first  impression  of  the  house  still  affected 
her  imagination.  Danny,  who  divined  her  malaise,  but 
mistook  it  for  the  terror  he  was  used  to  inspiring,  began 
to  play  the  bully.  It  was  twilight,  one  of  those  sapphire 
twilights  of  early  spring;  the  gas  had  not  been  lighted  and 
the  fire  had  died  away  to  a  glow.  Sylvia  had  thrown  off  his 
caressing  arm  three  times,  when  Danny  suddenly  jumped 
up,  pulled  out  a  clasp-knife,  and,  standing  over  Sylvia, 
threatened  her  with  death  if  she  would  not  immediately 
consent  to  be  his.  Sylvia's  heart  beat  a  little  faster  at 
such  a  threat  delivered  with  all  the  additional  force  vile 
language  could  give  to  it,  but  she  saw  two  things  quite 
clearly:  first,  that,  if  Danny  were  really  to  kill  her,  death 
would  be  far  preferable  to  surrender;  secondly,  that  the 
surest  way  of  avoiding  either  would  be  by  assuming  he 
would  turn  out  a  coward  in  the  face  of  the  unexpected. 
She  rose  from  the  arm-chair;  Danny  rushed  to  the  door, 
flourishing  his  knife  and  forbidding  her  to  think  of  escape. 
"Who  wants  to  escape?"  she  asked,  in  so  cool  a  tone 
that  Danny,  who  had  naturally  anticipated  a  more 
feminine  reception  of  his  violence,  failed  to  sustain  his 
part  by  letting  her  see  that  he  was  puzzled.  She  strolled 
across  the  room  to  the  wash-stand;  then  she  strolled  up  to 
the  brigand. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  121 

"Put  that  knife  away,"  she  said.  "I  want  to  tell  you 
something,  darling  Danny." 

In  the  gloom  she  could  see  that  he  threw  a  suspicious 
glance  at  her  for  the  endearing  epithet,  but  he  put  away  the 
knife. 

"What  do  you  want  to  say?"  he  growled. 

"Only  this."  She  brought  her  arm  swiftly  round  and 
emptied  the  water-bottle  over  him.  "Though  I  ought  to 
smash  it  on  your  greasy  head.  I  read  in  a  book  once  that 
the  Jews  were  a  subject  race.  You'd  better  light  the  gas." 

He  spluttered  that  he  was  all  wet,  and  she  turned  away 
from  him,  horribly  scared  that  in  a  moment  his  fingers 
would  be  tightening  round  her  neck;  but  he  had  taken  off 
his  coat  and  was  shaking  it. 

Sylvia  poked  the  fire  and  sat  down  again  in  the  arm- 
chair. "Listen,"  she  began. 

He  came  across  the  room  in  his  shirt-sleeves,  his  tie 
hanging  in  a  cascade  of  amber  silk  over  his  waistcoat. 

"No,  don't  pull  down  the  blinds,"  she  added.  "I  want 
to  be  quite  sure  you  really  have  cooled  down  and  aren't 
going  to  play  with  that  knife  again.  Listen.  It's  no  good 
your  trying  to  make  love  to  me.  I  don't  want  to  be  made 
love  to  by  anybody,  least  of  all  by  you." 

Danny  looked  more  cheerful  when  she  assured  him  of  her 
indifference  to  other  men. 

"It's  no  use  your  killing  me,  because  you'll  only  be 
hanged.  It's  no  use  your  stabbing  me,  because  you'll  go 
to  prison.  If  you  hit  me,  I  shall  hit  you  back.  You 
thought  I  was  afraid  of  you.  I  wasn't.  I'm  more  afraid 
of  a  bug  than  I  am  of  you.  I  saw  a  bug  to-day;  so  I'm 
going  to  leave  this  house.  The  weather's  getting  warmer. 
You  and  the  bugs  have  come  out  together.  Come  along, 
Danny,  dry  your  coat  and  tell  me  a  story  that  will  make 
me  laugh.  Tell  me  the  story  of  the  Jew  who  died  of  grief 
because  he  bought  his  wife  a  new  hat  and  found  his  best 
friend  had  bought  her  one  that  day  and  he  might  have 
saved  his  money.  Do  make  me  laugh,  Danny." 

They  went  to  the  Middlesex  music-hall  that  evening, 
and  Danny  did  not  suck  his  teeth  once.  The  next  morning 
he  told  Sylvia  that  he  had  been  to  visit  a  friend  who  wished 
very  much  to  meet  her,  and  that  he  proposed  to  introduce 


122  Sylvia    Scarlett 

him  that  afternoon,  if  she  agreed.  He  was  a  fellow  in  a 
good  way  of  business,  the  son  of  a  bootmaker  in  Drury 
Lane,  quite  a  superior  sort  of  fellow  and  one  by  whom  she 
could  not  fail  to  be  impressed;  his  name  was  Jay  Cohen. 
The  friend  arrived  toward  four  o'clock,  and  Danny  on 
some  excuse  left  him  with  Sylvia.  He  had  big  teeth  and 
round,  prominent  eyes;  his  boots  were  very  glossy  and 
sharply  pointed  at  the  toes,  with  uppers  of  what  looked  like 
leopard-skin.  Observing  Sylvia's  glances  directed  to  his 
boots,  he  asked  with  a  smile  if  she  admired  the  latest  thing. 
She  confessed  they  were  rather  too  late  for  her  taste,  and 
Mr.  Cohen  excused  them  as  a  pair  sent  back  to  his  father 
by  a  well-known  music-hall  comedian,  who  complained  of 
their  pinching  him.  Sylvia  said  it  was  lucky  they  only 
pinched  him;  she  should  not  have  been  astonished  if  they 
had  bitten  him. 

"You're  a  Miss  Smartie,  aren't  you?"  said  Jay  Cohen. 

The  conversation  languished  for  a  while,  but  presently 
he  asked  Sylvia  why  she  was  so  unkind  to  his  friend  Danny. 

"What  do  you  mean,  'unkind'?"  she  repeated.  "Un- 
kind what  about?" 

Mr.  Cohen  smiled  in  a  deprecating  way.  "He's  a  good 
boy,  is  Danny.  Real  good.  He  is,  really.  All  the  girls 
are  mad  about  Danny.  You  know,  smart  girls,  girls  that 
get  around.  He's  very  free,  too.  Money's  nothing  to 
Danny  when  he's  out  to  spend.  His  father's  got  a  tobac- 
conist's shop  in  the  Caledonian  Road.  A  good  business — 
a  very  good  business.  Danny  told  me  what  the  turn-over 
was  once,  and  I  was  surprised.  I  remember  I  thought 
what  a  rare  good  business  it  was.  Well,  Danny's  feeling 
a  bit  upset  to-day,  and  he  came  round  to  see  me  early  this 
morning.  He  must  have  been  very  upset,  because  it  was 
very  early,  and  he  said  to  me  that  he  was  mad  over  a 

firl  and  would  I  speak  for  him  ?  He  reckoned  he'd  made  a 
ig  mistake  and  he  wanted  to  put  it  right,  but  he  was 
afraid  of  being  laughed  at,  because  the  young  lady  in 
question  was  a  bit  high-handed.  He  wants  to  marry  you. 
There  it  is  right  out.  He'd  like  to  marry  you  at  once,  but 
he's  afraid  of  his  father,  and  he  thought  .  .  ." 

Mr.  Cohen  broke  off  suddenly  in  his  proposal  and 
listened:  "What's  that?" 


Sylvia    Scarlett  123 

"It  sounds  like  some  one  shouting  down-stairs,"  Sylvia 
said.  "But  you  often  hear  rows  going  on  down  there. 
There  was  a  row  yesterday  because  a  woman  bit  on  a  stone 
in  a  pie  and  broke  her  tooth." 

"That's  Jubie's  voice,"  said  Mr.  Cohen,  blinking  his  eyes 
and  running  his  hands  nervously  through  his  sleek  hair. 

"  Who's  Jubie?" 

Before  he  could  explain  there  was  a  sound  of  impassioned 
footsteps  on  the  stairs.  In  a  moment  the  door  was  flung 
open,  and  a  handsome  Jewess  with  flashing  eyes  and 
ear-rings  slammed  it  behind  her. 

"Where's  Danny?"  she  demanded. 

"Is  that  you,  Jubie?"  said  Mr.  Cohen.  "Danny's  gone 
over  to  see  his  dad.  He  won't  be  here  to-day." 

"You  liar,  he's  here  this  moment.  I  followed  him  into 
the  shop  and  he  ran  up-stairs.  So  you're  the  kid  he's  been 
trailing  around  with  him,"  she  said,  eying  Sylvia.  "The 
dirty  rotter!" 

Sylvia  resented  the  notion  of  being  trailed  by  such  a 
one  as  Danny  Lewis,  but,  feeling  undecided  how  to  appease 
this  tropical  creature,  she  took  the  insult  without  reply. 

"He  thinks  to  double  cross  Jubie  Myers!  Wait  till  my 
brother  Sam  knows  where  he  is." 

Mr.  Cohen  had  retired  to  the  window  and  was  studying 
the  traffic  of  Euston  Road;  one  of  his  large  ears  was  twitch- 
ing nervously  toward  the  threats  of  the  outraged  Miss 
Myers,  who  after  much  breathless  abuse  of  Sylvia  at  last 
retired  to  fetch  her  brother  Sam.  When  she  was  gone,  Mr. 
Cohen  said  he  thought  he  would  go  too,  because  he  did  not 
feel  inclined  to  meet  Sam  Myers,  who  was  a  pugilist  with 
many  victories  to  his  credit  at  Wonderland;  just  as  he 
reached  the  door,  Danny  entered  and  with  a  snarl  accused 
him  of  trying  to  round  on  him. 

"You  know  you  fetched  Jubie  here  on  purpose,  so  as  you 
could  do  me  in  with  the  kid,"  said  Danny.  "I  know  you, 
Jay  Cohen." 

They  wrangled  for  some  time  over  this,  until  suddenly 
Danny  landed  his  friend  a  blow  between  the  eyes.  Sylvia, 
recognizing  the  Danny  who  had  so  neatly  knocked  out 
Hubert  Organ  in  Colonial  Terrace,  became  pleasantly 
enthusiastic  on  his  behalf,  and  cried  "Bravo!" 


124  Sylvia    Scarlett 

The  encouragement  put  a  fine  spirit  into  Danny's  blows; 
he  hammered  the  unfortunate  Cohen  round  and  round  the 
room,  upsetting  tables  and  chairs  and  wash-stand  until 
with  a  stinging  blow  he  knocked  him  backward  into  the 
slop-pail,  in  which  he  sat  so  heavily  that  when  he  tried  to 
rise  the  slop-pail  stuck  and  gave  him  the  appearance  of  a 
large  baboon  crawling  with  elevated  rump  on  all-fours. 
Danny  kicked  off  the  slop-pail,  and  invited  Cohen  to  stand 
up  to  him;  but  when  he  did  get  on  his  feet  he  ran  to  the 
door  and  reached  the  stairs  just  as  Mrs.  Conner  was  wearily 
ascending  to  find  out  what  was  happening.  He  tried  to 
stop  himself  by  clutching  the  knob  of  the  baluster,  which 
broke;  the  result  was  that  he  dragged  Mrs.  Conner  with 
him  in  a  glissade  which  ended  behind  the  counter.  The 
confusion  in  the  shop  became  general:  Mr.  Conner  cut  his 
thumb,  and  the  sight  of  the  blood  caused  a  woman  who  was 
eating  a  sausage  to  choke;  another  customer  took  ad- 
vantage of  the  row  to  snatch  a  side  of  bacon  and  try  to 
escape,  but  another  customer  with  a  finer  moral  sense 
prevented  him;  a  dog,  who  was  sniffing  in  the  entrance, 
saw  the  bacon  on  the  floor  and  tried  to  seize  it,  but,  getting 
his  tail  trodden  upon  by  somebody,  it  took  fright  and  bit  a 
small  boy  who  was  waiting  to  change  a  shilling  into 
coppers.  Meanwhile  Sylvia,  who  expected  every  moment 
that  Jubie  and  her  pugilistic  brother  would  return  and 
increase  the  confusion  with  possibly  unpleasant  con- 
sequences for  herself,  took  advantage  of  Danny's  being 
occupied  in  an  argument  with  Cohen  and  the  two  Gonners 
to  put  on  her  hat  and  coat  and  escape  from  the  shop.  She 
jumped  on  the  first  omnibus  and  congratulated  herself 
when  she  looked  round  and  saw  a  policeman  entering  the 
eating-house. 

Presently  the  conductor  came  up  for  her  fare;  she  found 
she  had  fivepence  in  the  world.  She  asked  him  where  the 
omnibus  went,  and  was  told  to  the  Cedars  Hotel,  West 
Kensington. 

" Past  Lillie  Road?" 

He  nodded,  and  she  paid  away  her  last  penny.  After  all, 
even  if  Monkley  and  her  father  did  owe  Mrs.  Meares  a  good 
deal  of  money,  Sylvia  did  not  believe  she  would  have  her 
arrested.  She  would  surely  be  too  much  interested  to  find 


Sylvia    Scarlett  125 

that  she  was  a  girl  and  not  a  boy.  Sylvia  laughed  when  she 
thought  of  Jay  Cohen  in  the  slop-pail,  for  she  remembered 
the  baboon  in  Lillie  Road,  and  she  wondered  if  Clara  was 
still  there.  What  a  lot  she  would  have  to  tell  Mrs.  Meares, 
and  if  the  baron  had  not  left  she  would  ask  him  why  he 
had  attacked  her  in  that  extraordinary  way  when  she  went 
to  the  party  in  Redcliffe  Gardens.  That  was  more  than 
two  years  ago  now.  Sylvia  wished  she  had  gone  to  Lillie 
Road  with  Arthur  Madden  when  she  had  some  money  and 
could  have  paid  Mrs.  Meares  what  was  owing  to  her.  Now 
she  had  not  a  penny  in  the  world;  she  had  not  even  any 
clothes.  The  omnibus  jogged  on,  and  Sylvia's  thoughts 
jogged  with  it. 

"I  wonder  if  I  shall  always  have  adventures,"  she  said 
to  herself,  "but  I  wish  I  could  sometimes  have  adventures 
that  have  nothing  to  do  with  love.  It's  such  a  nuisance  to 
be  always  running  away  for  the  same  reason.  It's  such  a 
stupid  reason.  But  it's  rather  jolly  to  run  away.  It's  more 
fun  than  being  like  that  girl  in  front."  She  contemplated 
a  girl  of  about  her  own  age,  to  whom  an  elderly  woman  was 
pointing  out  the  St.  James's  Hall  with  a  kind  of  suppressed 
excitement,  a  fever  of  unsatisfied  pleasure. 

"You've  never  been  to  the  Moore  and  Burgess  minstrels, 
have  you,  dear?"  she  was  saying.  "We  must  get  your 
father  to  take  us  some  afternoon.  Look  at  the  people 
coming  out." 

The  girl  looked  dutifully,  but  Sylvia  thought  it  was  more 
amusing  to  look  at  the  people  struggling  to  mount  omni- 
buses already  full.  She  wondered  what  that  girl  would 
have  done  with  somebody  like  Danny  Lewis,  and  she  felt 
sorry  for  the  prim  and  dutiful  young  creature  who  could 
never  see  Jay  Cohen  sitting  in  a  slop-pail.  Sylvia  burst 
into  a  loud  laugh,  and  a  stout  woman  who  was  occupying 
three-quarters  of  her  seat  edged  away  from  her  a  little. 

"We  shall  be  late  for  tea,"  said  the  elderly  woman  in  an 
ecstasy  of  dissipation,  when  she  saw  the  clock  at  Hyde 
Park  Corner.  "  We  sha'n't  be  home  till  after  six.  We  ought 
to  have  had  tea  at  King's  Cross." 

The  elderly  woman  was  still  talking  about  tea  when  they 
stopped  at  Sloane  Street,  and  Sylvia's  counterpart  was  still 
returning  polite  answers  to  her  speculation;  when  they 


126  Sylvia    Scarlett 

got  down  at  South  Kensington  Station  the  last  thing  Sylvia 
heard  was  a  suggestion  that  perhaps  it  might  be  possible 
to  arrange  for  dinner  to  be  a  quarter  of  an  hour  earlier. 

It  was  dark  when  Sylvia  reached  the  house  in  Lillie 
Road  and  she  hoped  very  much  that  Clara  would  open  the 
door;  but  another  servant  came,  and  when  she  asked  for 
Mrs.  Meares  a  sudden  alarm  caught  her  that  Mrs.  Meares 
might  no  longer  be  here  and  that  she  would  be  left  alone 
in  the  night  without  a  penny  in  the  world.  But  Mrs. 
Meares  was  in. 

"Have  you  come  about  the  place?"  whispered  the  new 
servant.  "Because  if  you  have  you'll  take  my  advice  and 
have  nothing  to  do  with  it." 

Sylvia  asked  why. 

"Why,  it's  nothing  but  a  common  lodging-house  in  my 
opinion.  The  woman  who  keeps  it — lady  she  calls  herself— 
tries  to  kid  you  as  they're  all  paying  guests.  And  the  cats! 
You  may  like  cats.  I  don't.  Besides  I've  been  used  to 
company  where  I've  been  in  seryice,  and  the  only  com- 
pany you  get  here  is  beetles.  If  any  one  goes  down  into  the 
kitchen  at  night  it's  like  walking  on  nutshells,  they're  so 
thick." 

"I  haven't  come  about  the  place,"  Sylvia  explained.  "I 
want  to  see  Mrs.  Meares  herself." 

"Oh,  a  friend  of  hers.  I'm  sorry,  I'm  shaw,"  said  the 
servant,  "but  I  haven't  said  nothing  but  what  is  gospel 
truth,  and  I  told  her  the  same.  You'd  better  come  up  to 
the  droring-room — well,  droring-room!  You'll  have  to 
excuse  the  laundry,  which  is  all  over  the  chairs  because  we 
had  the  sweep  in  this  morning.  A  nice  hullabaloo  there 
was  yesterday!  Fire-engines  and  all.  Mrs.  Meares  was 
very  upset.  She's  up  in  her  bedroom,  I  expect." 

The  servant  lit  the  gas  in  the  drawing-room  and,  leaving 
Sylvia  among  the  outspread  linen,  went  up-stairs  to  fetch 
Mrs.  Meares,  who  shortly  afterward  descended  in  a  con- 
dition of  dignified  bewilderment  and  entered  the  room 
with  one  arm  arched  like  a  note  of  interrogation  in  cautious 
welcome. 

"Miss  Scarlett?    The  name  is  familiar,  but — ?" 

Sylvia  poured  out  her  story,  and  at  the  end  of  it  Mrs. 
Meares  dreamily  smoothed  her  brow. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  127 

"I  don't  quite  understand.  Were  you  a  girl  dressed  as  a 
boy  then  or  are  you  a  boy  dressed  as  a  girl  now?" 

Sylvia  explained,  and  while  she  was  giving  the  explana- 
tion she  became  aware  of  a  profound  change  in  Mrs. 
Meares's  attitude  toward  her,  an  alteration  of  standpoint 
much  more  radical  than  could  have  been  caused  by  any 
resentment  at  the  behavior  of  Monkley  and  her  father. 
Suddenly  Sylvia  regarded  Mrs.  Meares  with  the  eyes  of 
Clara,  or  of  that  new  servant  who  had  whispered  to  her  in 
the  hall.  She  was  no  longer  the  bland  and  futile  Irish- 
woman of  regal  blood;  the  good-natured  and  feckless 
creature  with  open  placket  and  draperies  trailing  in  the 
dust  of  her  ill-swept  house;  the  soft- voiced,  soft-hearted 
Hibernian  with  a  gentle  smile  for  man's  failings  and  foibles, 
and  a  tear  ever  welling  from  that  moist  gray  eye  in  memory 
of  her  husband's  defection  and  the  death  of  her  infant  son. 
Sylvia  felt  that  now  she  was  being  sized  up  by  some  one 
who  would  never  be  indulgent  again,  who  would  exact 
from  her  the  uttermost  her  girlhood  could  give,  who  would 
never  forget  the  advantage  she  had  gained  in  learning  how 
desperate  was  the  state  of  Sylvia  Scarlett,  and  who  would 
profit  by  it  accordingly. 

"It  seems  so  peculiar  to  resort  to  me,"  Mrs.  Meares  was 
saying,  "after  the  way  your  father  treated  me,  but  I'm  not 
the  woman  to  bear  a  grudge.  Thank  God,  I  can  meet  the 
blows  of  fortune  with  nobility  and  forgive  an  injury  with 
any  one  in  the  world.  It's  lucky  indeed  that  I  can  show  my 
true  character  and  offer  you  assistance.  The  servant  is 
leaving  to-morrow,  and  though  I  will  not  take  advantage 
of  your  position  to  ask  you  to  do  anything  in  the  nature  of 
menial  labor,  though  to  be  sure  it's  myself  knows  too  well 
the  word — to  put  it  shortly,  I  can  offer  you  board  and 
lodging  in  return  for  any  little  help  you  may  give  me  until 
I  will  get  a  new  servant.  And  it's  not  easy  to  get  servants 
these  days.  Such  grand  ideas  have  they." 

Sylvia  felt  that  she  ought  to  accept  this  offer;  she  was 
destitute  and  she  wished  to  avoid  charity,  having  grasped 
that,  though  it  was  a  great  thing  to  make  oneself  indis- 
pensable, it  was  equally  important  not  to  put  oneself  under 
an  obligation;  finally  it  would  be  a  satisfaction  to  pay 
back  what  her  father  owed.  Not  that  she  fancied  his  ghost 

9 


128  Sylvia    Scarlett 

would  be  disturbed  by  the  recollection  of  any  earthly  debts; 
it  would  be  purely  a  personal  satisfaction,  and  she  told  Mrs. 
Meares  that  she  was  willing  to  help  under  the  proposed 
terms. 

Somewhere  about  nine  o'clock  Sylvia  sat  down  with  Mrs. 
Meares  in  the  breakfast-room  to  supper,  which  was  served 
by  Amelia  as  if  she  had  been  unwillingly  dragged  into  a 
game  of  cards  and  was  showing  her  displeasure  in  the  way 
she  dealt  the  hand.  The  incandescent  gas  jigged  up  and 
down,  and  Mrs.  Meares  swept  her  plate  every  time  she 
languorously  flung  morsels  to  the  numerous  cats,  some  of 
which  they  did  not  like  and  left  to  be  trodden  into  the 
threadbare  carpet  by  Amelia.  Sylvia  made  inquiries  about 
Mr.  Morgan  and  the  baron,  but  they  had  both  left;  the 
guests  at  present  were  a  young  actor  who  hoped  to  walk 
on  in  the  new  production  at  the  St.  James's,  a  Noncon- 
formist minister  who  had  been  persecuted  by  his  con- 
gregation into  resigning,  and  an  elderly  clerk  threatened 
with  locomotor  ataxia,  who  had  a  theory,  contrary  to  the 
advice  of  his  doctor,  that  it  was  beneficial  to  walk  to  the 
city  every  morning.  His  symptoms  were  described  with 
many  details,  but,  owing  to  Mrs.  Meares's  diving  under  the 
table  to  show  the  cats  where  a  morsel  of  meat  had  escaped 
their  notice,  it  was  difficult  to  distinguish  between  the 
symptoms  of  the  disease,  the  topography  of  the  meat,  and 
the  names  of  the  cats. 

Next  day  Sylvia  watched  Amelia  put  on  the  plumage  of 
departure  and  leave  with  her  yellow  tin  trunk;  then  she 
set  to  work  to  help  Mrs.  Meares  make  the  beds  of  Mr. 
Leslie  Warburton,  the  actor;  Mr.  Croasdale,  the  minister; 
and  Mr.  Witherwick,  the  clerk.  Her  companion's  share  was 
entirely  verbal  and  she  disliked  the  task  immensely.  When 
the  beds  were  finished,  she  made  an  attempt  with  Mrs. 
Meares  to  put  away  the  clean  linen,  but  Mrs.  Meares  went 
off  in  the  middle  to  find  the  words  of  a  poem  she  could  not 
remember,  leaving  behind  her  towels  to  mark  her  passage 
as  boys  in  paper-chases  strew  paper  on  Hampstead  Heath. 
She  did  not  find  the  words  of  the  poem,  or,  if  she  did,  she 
had  forgotten  them  when  Sylvia  discovered  her;  but  she 
had  decided  to  alter  the  arrangement  of  the  drawing-room 
curtains,  so  that  to  the  unassorted  unburied  linen  were 


Sylvia    Scarlett  129 

added  long  strips  of  faded  green  silk  which  hung  about 
the  house  for  some  days.  Mrs.  Meares  asked  Sylvia 
if  she  would  like  to  try  her  hand  at  an  omelette;  the  result 
was  a  failure,  whether  on  account  of  the  butter  or  the  eggs 
was  not  quite  certain;  the  cat  to  which  it  was  given  was 
sick. 

The  three  lodgers  made  no  impression  on  Sylvia.  Each 
of  them  in  turn  tried  to  kiss  her  when  she  first  went  into 
his  room;  each  of  them  afterward  complained  bitterly  of  the 
way  the  eggs  were  poached  at  breakfast  and  asked  Mrs. 
Meares  why  she  had  got  rid  of  Amelia.  Gradually  Sylvia 
found  that  she  was  working  as  hard  as  Clara  used  to  work, 
that  slowly  and  gently  she  was  being  smothered  by  Mrs. 
Meares,  and  that  the  process  was  regarded  by  Mrs.  Meares 
as  an  act  of  holy  charity,  to  which  she  frequently  alluded 
in  a  very  superior  way. 

Early  one  afternoon  at  the  end  of  April  Sylvia  went  out 
shopping  for  Mrs.  Meares,  which  was  not  such  a  Dimple 
matter,  because  a  good  deal  of  persuasiveness  had  to  be 
used  nowadays  with  the  tradesmen  on  account  of  unpaid 
books.  As  she  passed  the  entrance  to  the  Earl's  Court 
Exhibition  she  saw  Mabel  Bannerman  coming  out;  though 
she  had  hated  Mabel  and  had  always  blamed  her  for  her 
father's  death,  past  enmity  fled  away  in  the  pleasure  of 
seeing  somebody  who  belonged  to  a  life  that  only  a  month 
of  Mrs.  Meares  had  wonderfully  enchanted.  She  called 
after  her;  Mabel,  only  slightly  more  flaccid  nowadays, 
welcomed  her  without  hesitation. 

"Why,  if  it  isn't  Sylvia!  Well,  I  declare!  You  are  a 
stranger." 

They  talked  for  a  while  on  the  pavement,  until  Mabel, 
who  disliked  such  publicity  except  in  a  love-affair,  and  who 
was  frankly  eager  for  a  full  account  of  what  had  happened 
after  she  left  Swanage,  invited  Sylvia  to  "have  one"  at  the 
public  house  to  which  her  father  in  the  old  days  used  to 
invite  Jimmy,  and  where  once  he  had  been  surprised  by 
Sylvia's  arrival  with  his  friend. 

Mabel  was  shocked  to  think  that  Henry  had  perhaps 
died  on  her  account,  but  she  assured  Sylvia  that  for  any 
wrong  she  had  done  him  she  had  paid  ten  times  over  in  the 
life  she  had  led  with  the  other  man. 


130  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Oh,  he  was  a  brute.  Your  dad  was  an  angel  beside  him, 
dear.  Oh,  I  was  a  stupid  girl!  But  there,  it's  no  good  cry- 
ing over  spilt  milk.  What's  done  can't  be  undone,  and 
I've  paid.  My  voice  is  quite  gone.  I  can't  sing  a  note. 
What  do  you  think  I'm  doing  now?  Working  at  the 
Exhibition.  It  opens  next  week,  you  know." 

"Acting?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Acting?  No!  I'm  in  Open  Sesame,  the  Hall  of  a 
Thousand  and  One  Marvels.  Well,  I  suppose  it  is  acting 
in  a  way,  because  I'm  supposed  to  be  a  Turkish  woman. 
You  know,  sequins  and  trousers  and  a  what  d'ye  call  it — 
round  my  face.  You  know.  Oh  dear,  whatever  is  it 
called?  A  hookah!" 

"But  a  hookah's  a  pipe,"  Sylvia  objected.  "You  mean 
a  yashmak." 

"That's  it.  Well,  I  sell  Turkish  Delight,  but  some  of 
the  girls  sell  coffee,  and  for  an  extra  threepence  you  can  see 
the  SiAan's  harem.  It  ought  to  go  well.  There's  a  couple 
of  real  Turks  and  a  black  eunuch  who  gives  me  the  creeps. 
The  manager's  very  hopeful.  Which  reminds  me.  He's 
looking  out  for  some  more  girls.  Why  don't  you  apply? 
It  isn't  like  you,  Sylvia,  to  be  doing  what's  nothing  better 
than  a  servant's  job.  I'm  so  afraid  I  shall  get  a  varicose 
vein  through  standing  about  so  much,  and  an  elastic  stock- 
ing makes  one  look  so  old.  Oh  dear,  don't  let's  talk  about 
age.  Drink  up  and  have  another." 

Sylvia  explained  to  Mabel  about  her  lack  of  money  and 
clothes,  and  it  was  curious  to  discover  how  pleasant  and 
sympathetic  Mabel  was  now — another  instance  of  the  de- 
grading effect  of  love,  for  Sylvia  could  hardly  believe  that 
this  was  the  hysterical  creature  who  used  to  keep  her 
awake  in  Fitzroy  Street. 

"I'd  lend  you  the  money,"  said  Mabel,  "but  really, 
dear,  until  we  open  I  haven't  got  very  much.  In  fact," 
she  added,  looking  at  the  empty  glasses,  "when  I've  paid 
for  these  two  I  shall  be  quite  stony.  Still,  I  live  quite 
close.  Finborough  Road.  Why  don't  you  come  and  stay 
with  me?  I'll  take  you  round  to  the  manager  to-morrow 
morning.  He's  sure  to  engage  you.  Of  course,  the  salary 
is  small.  I  don't  suppose  he'll  offer  more  than  fifteen 
shillings.  Still,  there's  tips,  and  anything  would  be  better 


Sylvia    Scarlett  131 

than  slaving  for  that  woman.  I  live  at  three  hundred  and 
twenty.  I've  got  a  nice  room  with  a  view  over  Brompton 
Cemetery.  One  might  be  in  the  country.  It's  beautifully 
quiet  except  for  the  cats,  and  you  hardly  notice  the 
trains." 

Sylvia  promised  that  she  would  think  it  over  and  let 
her  know  that  evening. 

"That's  right,  dear.    The  landlady's  name  is  Gowndry." 

They  parted  with  much  cordiality  and  good  wishes,  and 
Sylvia  went  back  to  Lillie  Road.  Mrs.  Meares  was  deeply 
injured  when  she  was  informed  that  her  lady-help  proposed 
to  desert  her. 

"But  surely  you  shall  wait  till  I've  got  a  servant,"  she 
said.  "And  what  will  poor  Mr.  Witherwick  do?  He's  so 
fond  of  you,  Sylvia.  I'm  sure  your  poor  father  would  be 
most  distressed  to  think  of  you  at  Earl's  Court.  Such 
temptations  for  a  young  girl.  I  look  upon  myself  as  your 
guardian,  you  know.  I  would  feel  a  big  responsibility  if 
anything  came  to  you." 

Sylvia,  however,  declined  to  stay. 

"And  I  wanted  to  give  you  a  little  kitten.  Mavourneen 
will  be  having  kittens  next  month,  and  May  cats  are  so 
lucky.  When  you  told  me  about  your  black  cat,  Maria,  I 
said  to  myself  that  I  would  be  giving  you  one.  And  dear 
Parnell  is  the  father,  and  if  it's  not  Parnell,  it's  my  darling 
Brian  Boru.  You  beauty!  Was  you  the  father  of  some 
sweet  little  kitties?  Clever  man!" 

When  Mrs.  Meares  turned  away  to  congratulate  Brian 
Boru  upon  his  imminent  if  ambiguous  paternity,  Sylvia 
went  up-stairs  to  get  her  only  possession — a  coat  with  a  fur- 
trimmed  collar  and  cuffs,  which  she  had  worn  alternately 
with  underclothing  for  a  month;  this  week  the  under- 
clothing was,  luckily,  not  at  the  wash.  Sylvia  shook  off 
Mrs.  Meares's  last  remonstrances  and  departed  into  the 
balmy  April  afternoon.  The  weather  was  so  fine  that  she 
pawned  her  overcoat  and  bought  a  hat;  then  she  pawned 
her  fur  cap,  bought  a  pair  of  stockings  (the  pair  in  the  wash 
belonged  to  Mrs.  Meares),  and  went  to  Finborough 
Road. 

Mrs.  Gowndry  asked  if  she  was  the  young  lady  who  was 
going  to  share  Miss  Bannerman's  room;  when  Sylvia  said 


132  Sylvia    Scarlett 

she  was,  Mrs.  Gowndry  argued  that  the  bed  would  not 
hold  two  and  that  she  had  not  bargained  for  the  sofa's  being 
used  for  anything  but  sitting  on. 

"That  sofa's  never  been  slept  on  in  its  life,"  she  pro- 
tested. "And  if  I  start  in  letting  people  sleep  anywhere,  I 
might  as  well  turn  my  house  into  a  public  convenience  and 
have  done  with  it;  but, there,  it's  no  good  grumbling.  Such 
is  life.  It's  the  back  room.  Second  floor  up.  The  last 
lodger  burnt  his  name  on  the  door  with  a  poker,  so  you 
can't  make  no  mistake." 

Mrs.  Gowndry  dived  abruptly  into  the  basement  and 
left  Sylvia  to  find  her  way  up  to  Mabel's  room  alone.  Her 
hostess  was  in  a  kimono,  Oriental  even  away  from  the  Hall 
of  a  Thousand  and  One  Marvels;  she  had  tied  pink  bows 
to  every  projection  and  there  was  a  strong  smell  of  cheap 
scent.  Sylvia  welcomed  the  prettiness  and  sweetness  after 
Lillie  Road;  her  former  dislike  of  Mabel's  domestic  habits 
existed  no  longer;  she  told  her  of  the  meeting  with  Mrs. 
Gowndry  and  was  afraid  that  the  plan  of  living  here  might 
not  be  allowed. 

"Oh,  she's  always  like  that,"  Mabel  explained.  "She's 
a  silly  old  crow,  but  she's  very  nice,  really.  Her  husband's 
a  lavatory  attendant,  and,  being  shut  up  all  day  under- 
ground, he  grumbles  a  lot  when  he  comes  home,  and  of 
course  his  wife  has  to  suffer  for  it.  Where's  your  luggage  ?" 

"I  told  you  I  hadn't  got  any." 

"You  really  are  a  caution,  Sylvia.  Fancy!  Never 
mind.  I  expect  I'll  be  able  to  fit  you  out." 

"I  sha'n't  want  much,"  Sylvia  said,  "with  the  warm 
weather  coming." 

"  But  you'll  have  to  change  when  you  go  to  the  Exhibi- 
tion, and  you  don't  want  the  other  girls  to  stare." 

They  spent  the  evening  in  cutting  down  some  of  Mabel's 
underclothes,  and  Sylvia  wondered  more  than  ever  how  she 
could  have  once  found  her  so  objectionable.  In  an  excess 
of  affection  she  hugged  Mabel  and  thanked  her  warmly  for 
her  kindness. 

"Go  on,"  said  Mabel.  "There's  nothing  to  thank  me 
for.  You'd  do  the  same  for  me." 

"But  I  used  to  be  so  beastly  to  you." 

"Oh,  well,  you  were  only  a  kid.    You  didn't  understand 


Sylvia    Scarlett  133 

about  love.  Besides,  I  was  very  nervous  in  those  days.  I 
expect  there  were  faults  on  both  sides.  I  spoke  to  the 
manager  about  you,  and  I'm  sure  it  '11  be  all  right." 

The  following  morning  Sylvia  accompanied  Mabel  to  the 
Exhibition  and,  after  being  presented  to  Mr.  Woolfe,  the 
manager,  she  was  engaged  to  sell  cigarettes  and  serve  coffee 
in  the  Hall  of  a  Thousand  and  One  Marvels  from  eleven  in 
the  morning  till  eleven  at  night  on  a  salary  of  fourteen 
shillings  a  week,  all  extras  to  be  shared  with  seven  other 
young  ladies  similarly  engaged. 

"You'll  be  Amethyst,"  said  Mr.  Woolfe.  "You'd 
better  go  and  try  on  your  dress.  The  idea  is  that  there 
are  eight  beautiful  odalisques  dressed  like  precious  stones. 
Pretty  fancy,  isn't  it?  Now  don't  grumble  and  say  you'd 
rather  be  Diamond  or  Turquoys,  because  all  the  other 
jools  are  taken." 

Sylvia  passed  through  an  arched  doorway  hung  with  a 
heavy  curtain  into  the  dressing-room  of  the  eight  oda- 
lisques, which  lacked  in  Eastern  splendor,  and  was  very 
draughty.  Seven  girls,  mostly  older  than  herself,  were 
wrestling  with  veils  and  brocades. 

"He  said  we  was  to  cover  up  our  faces  with  this.  It  is 
chiffong  or  tool,  dear?" 

"Oh,  Daisy,  you  are  silly  to  let  him  make  you  Rewby. 
Why  don't  you  ask  him  to  let  you  be  Saffer?  You  don't 
mind,  do  you,  kiddie?  You're  dark.  You  take  Daisy's 
Rewby,  and  let  her  be  Saffer." 

"Aren't  we  going  to  wear  anything  over  these  drawers? 
Oh,  girls,  I  shall  feel  shy." 

Sylvia  did  not  think  that  any  of  them  would  feel  half  as 
shy  as  she  felt  at  the  present  moment  in  being  plunged  into 
the  company  of  girls  of  whose  thoughts  and  habits  and 
sensations  and  manners  she  was  utterly  ignorant.  She  felt 
more  at  ease  when  she  had  put  on  her  mauve  dress  and  had 
veiled  her  face.  When  they  were  all  ready,  they  paraded 
before  Mr.  Woolfe. 

"Very  good.  Very  good,"  he  said.  "Quite  a  lot  of  at- 
mosphere. Here  you,  my  dear,  Emruld,  put  your  yashmak 
up  a  bit  higher.  You  look  as  if  you'd  got  mumps  like  that. 
Now  then,  here's  the  henna  to  paint  your  finger-nails,  and 
the  kohl  for  your  eyes." 


134  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Coal  for  our  eyes,"  echoed  all  the  girls.  "Why  can't 
we  use  liquid  black  the  same  as  we  always  do?  Coal! 
What  a  liberty!  Whatever  next?" 

"That  shows  you  don't  know  anything  about  the  East. 
K-O-H-L,  not  C-O-A-L,  you  silly  girls.  And  don't  you 
get  hennering  your  hair.  It's  only  to  be  used  for  the 
nails." 

When  the  Exhibition  opened  on  the  1st  of  May  the 
Hall  of  a  Thousand  and  One  Marvels  was  the  only  side- 
show that  was  in  full  working  order.  The  negro  eunuch 
stood  outside  and  somewhat  inappropriately  bellowed  his 
invitation  to  the  passing  crowds  to  visit  Sesame,  where  all 
the  glamour  of  the  East  was  to  be  had  for  sixpence,  in- 
cluding a  cup  of  delicious  Turkish  coffee  specially  made  by 
the  Sultan's  own  coffee-maker.  Once  inside,  visitors  could 
for  a  further  sum  of  threepence  view  an  exact  reproduction 
of  a  Turkish  harem,  where  real  Turkish  ladies  in  all  the 
abandonment  of  languorous  poses  offered  a  spectacle  of 
luxury  that  could  only  be  surpassed  by  paying  another 
threepence  to  see  a  faithless  wife  tied  up  in  a  sack  and  flung 
into  the  Bosphorus  once  every  hour.  Other  threepennies 
secured  admission  to  Aladdin's  Cave,  where  the  Genie  of 
the  Lamp  told  fortunes,  or  to  the  Cave  of  the  Forty 
Thieves,  where  a  lucky  ticket  entitled  the  owner  to  draw  a 
souvenir  from  Ali  Baba's  sack  of  treasure,  and  see  Morgi- 
ana  dance  a  voluptuous  pas  seul  once  every  hour.  Visitors 
to  the  Hall  could  also  buy  attar  of  roses,  cigarettes,  seraglio 
pastilles,  and  Turkish  Delight.  It  was  very  Oriental — 
even  Mr.  Woolfe  wore  a  fez. 

Either  because  Sylvia  moved  in  a  way  that  seemed  to 
Mr.  Woolfe  more  Oriental  than  the  others  or  because  she 
got  on  very  well  with  him  personally,  she  was  soon  pro- 
moted to  a  small  inner  room  more  richly  draped  and  lighted 
by  a  jeweled  lamp  hanging  from  the  ceiling  of  gilded 
arabesques.  Here  Mr.  Woolfe  as  a  mark  of  his  esteem 
introduced  regular  customers  who  could  appreciate  the 
softer  carpet  and  deeper  divans.  At  one  end  was  a  lattice, 
beyond  which  might  be  seen  two  favorites  of  the  harem, 
who,  slowly  fanning  themselves,  reclined  eternally  amid 
perfumed  airs — that  is,  except  during  the  intervals  for 
dinner  and  tea,  which  lasted  half  an  hour  and  exposed  them 


Sylvia    Scarlett  135 

to  the  unrest  of  European  civilization.  One  of  these 
favorites  was  Mabel,  whom  Mr.  Woolfe  had  been  heard  to 
describe  as  his  beau  ideel  of  a  sultana,  and  whom  he  had 
taken  from  the  sale  of  Turkish  Delight  to  illustrate  his 
conception.  Mabel  was  paid  a  higher  salary  in  con- 
sequence, because,  inclosed  in  the  harem,  she  was  no  longer 
able  to  profit  by  the  male  admirers  who  had  bought 
Turkish  Delight  at  her  plump  hands.  The  life  was  well 
suited  to  her  natural  laziness;  though  she  dreaded  getting 
fat,  she  was  glad  to  be  relieved  of  the  menace  from  her 
varicose  vein.  Sylvia  was  the  only  odalisque  that  waited 
in  this  inner  room,  but  her  salary  was  not  raised,  since  she 
now  had  the  sole  right  to  all  the  extras;  she  certainly  pre- 
ferred this  darkened  chamber  to  the  other,  and  when  there 
were  no  intruders  from  the  world  outside  she  could  gossip 
through  the  lattice  with  the  two  favorites. 

Mrs.  Gowndry  had  let  Sylvia  a  small  room  at  the  very 
top  of  the  house;  notwithstanding  Mabel's  good  nature, 
she  might  have  grown  tired  of  being  always  at  close 
quarters  with  her.  Sylvia's  imagination  was  captured  by 
the  life  she  led  at  Earl's  Court;  she  made  up  her  mind  that 
one  day  she  would  somehow  visit  the  real  East.  When  Mr. 
Woolfe  found  out  her  deep  interest  in  the  part  she  was 
playing  and  her  fondness  for  reading,  he  lent  her  various 
books  that  had  inspired  his  creation  at  Earl's  Court;  she 
had  long  ago  read  the  Arabian  Nights,  but  there  were 
several  volumes  of  travels  which  fed  her  ambition  to  leave 
this  dull  Western  world.  On  Sunday  mornings  she  used 
to  lean  out  of  her  window  and  fancy  the  innumerable 
tombs  of  Brompton  Cemetery  were  the  minarets  of  an 
Eastern  town;  and  later  on,  when  June  made  every  hour  in 
the  open  air  desirable  after  being  shut  up  so  long  at  Earl's 
Court,  Sylvia  used  to  spend  her  Sunday  afternoons  in 
wandering  about  the  cemetery,  in  reading  upon  the  tombs 
the  exalted  claims  they  put  forward  for  poor  mortality, 
and  in  puzzling  over  the  broken  columns,  the  urns  and 
anchors  and  weeping  angels  that  commemorated  the 
wealthy  dead.  Every  one  buried  here  had  lived  on  earth 
a  life  of  perfect  virtue,  it  seemed;  every  one  buried  here 
had  been  confident  of  another  life  after  the  grave.  Long 
ago  at  Lille  she  had  been  taught  something  about  the 


136  Sylvia    Scarlett 

future  these  dead  people  seemed  to  have  counted  upon; 
but  there  had  been  so  much  to  do  on  Sunday  mornings, 
and  she  could  not  remember  that  she  had  ever  gone  to 
church  after  she  was  nine.  Perhaps  she  had  made  a 
mistake  in  abandoning  so  early  the  chance  of  finding 
out  more  about  religion;  it  was  difficult  not  to  be  im- 
pressed by  the  universal  testimony  of  these  countless 
tombs.  Religion  had  evidently  a  great  influence  upon 
humanity,  though  in  her  reading  she  had  never  been  struck 
by  the  importance  of  it.  People  in  books  attended  church 
just  as  they  wore  fine  clothes,  or  fought  duels,  or  went  to 
dinner-parties;  the  habit  belonged  to  the  observances  of 
polite  society  and  if  she  ever  found  herself  in  such  society 
she  would  doubtless  behave  like  her  peers.  She  had  not 
belonged  to  a  society  with  leisure  for  church-going.  Yet 
in  none  of  the  books  that  she  had  read  had  religion  seemed 
anything  like  so  important  as  love  or  money.  She  herself 
thought  that  the  pleasures  of  both  these  were  much  exag- 
gerated, though  in  her  own  actual  experience  their  power 
of  seriously  disturbing  some  people  was  undeniable.  But 
who  was  ever  disturbed  by  religion?  Probably  all  these 
tombs  were  a  luxury  of  the  rich,  rather  like  visiting-cards, 
which,  as  every  one  knew,  must  be  properly  inscribed  and 
follow  a  certain  pattern.  She  remembered  that  old  Mr. 
Gustard,  who  was  not  rich,  had  been  very  doubtful  of 
another  life,  and  she  was  consoled  by  this  reflection,  for  she 
had  been  rendered  faintly  anxious  by  the  pious  repetitions 
of  faith  in  a  future  life,  practical  comfort  in  which  could 
apparently  only  be  secured  by  the  strictest  behavior  on 
earth.  She  had  the  fancy  to  invent  her  own  epitaph: 
"Here  lies  Sylvia  Scarlett,  who  was  always  running  away. 
If  she  has  to  live  all  over  again  and  be  the  same  girl,  she 
accepts  no  responsibility  for  anything  that  may  occur." 
She  printed  this  on  a  piece  of  paper,  fastened  it  to  a  twig, 
and  stuck  it  into  the  earth  to  judge  the  effect.  Sylvia 
was  so  deeply  engrossed  in  her  task  that  she  did  not  see 
that  somebody  was  watching  her  until  she  had  stepped 
back  to  admire  her  handiwork. 

"You  extraordinary  girl!'*  said  a  pleasant  voice. 

Looking  round,  Sylvia  saw  a  thin  clean-shaven  man  of 
about  thirty,  who  was  leaning  on  a  cane  with  an  ivory 


Sylvia    Scarlett  137 

crook  and  looking  at  her  epitaph  through  gold-rimmed 
glasses.  She  blushed,  to  her  annoyance,  and  snatched 
up  the  twig. 

"What  are  you  always  running  away  from?"  the 
stranger  asked.  "Or  is  that  an  indiscreet  question?" 

Sylvia  could  have  shaken  herself  for  not  giving  a  ready 
answer,  but  this  new-comer  seemed  entitled  to  something 
better  than  rudeness,  and  her  readv  answers  were  usually 
rude. 

"Now  don't  go  away,"  the  stranger  begged.  "It's  so 
refreshing  to  meet  something  alive  in  this  wilderness  of 
death.  I've  been  inspecting  a  grave  for  a  friend  who  is 
abroad,  and  I'm  feeling  thoroughly  depressed.  One  can't 
avoid  reading  epitaphs  in  a  cemetery,  can  one?  Or  writing 
them?"  he  added,  with  a  pleasant  laugh.  "I  like  yours 
much  the  best  of  any  I've  read  so  far.  What  a  charming 
name.  Sylvia  Scarlett.  Balzac  said  the  best  epitaphs 
were  single  names.  If  I  saw  Sylvia  Scarlett  on  a  tomb 
with  nothing  else,  my  appetite  for  romance  would  be  per- 
fectly satisfied." 

"Have  you  read  many  books  of  Balzac?"  Sylvia  asked. 

The  stranger's  conversation  had  detained  her;  she  could 
ask  the  question  quite  simply. 

"I've  read  most  of  them,  I  think." 

"I've  read  some,"  Sylvia  said.  "But  he's  not  my 
favorite  writer.  I  like  Scott  better.  But  now  I  only  read 
books  about  the  Orient." 

She  was  rather  proud  of  the  last  word  and  hoped  the 
stranger  would  notice  it. 

"What  part  attracts  you  most?" 

"I  think  Japan,"  Sylvia  said.  "But  I  like  Turkey 
rather.  Only  I  wouldn't  ever  let  myself  be  shut  up  in  a 
harem." 

"I  suppose  you'd  run  away?"  said  the  stranger,  with  a 
smile.  "  Which  reminds  me  that  you  haven't  answered  my 
first  question.  Please  do,  if  it's  not  impertinent." 

They  wandered  along  the  paths  shaded  by  yews  and 
willows,  and  Sylvia  told  him  many  things  about  her  life; 
he  was  the  easiest  person  to  talk  to  that  she  had  ever  met. 

"And  so  this  passion  for  the  East  has  been  inspired  by 
the  Hall  of  a  Thousand  and  One  Marvels.  Dear  me, 


138  Sylvia    Scarlett 

what  an  unexpected  consequence.  And  this  Hall  of  a 
Thousand  and  One  Marbles,"  he  indicated  the  cemetery 
with  a  sweep  of  his  cane,  "this  inspires  you  to  write  an 
epitaph?  Well,  my  dear,  such  an  early  essay  in  mortuary 
literature  may  end  in  a  famous  elegy.  You  evidently 
possess  the  poetic  temperament." 

"I  don't  like  poetry,"  Sylvia  interrupted.  "I  don't 
believe  it  ever.  Nobody  really  talks  like  that  when  they're 
in  love." 

"Quite  true,"  said  the  stranger.  "Poets  have  often  ere 
this  been  charged  with  exaggeration.  Perhaps  I  wrong 
you  in  attributing  to  you  the  poetic  temperament.  Yes, 
on  second  thoughts,  I'm  sure  I  do.  You  are  an  eminently 
practical  young  lady.  I  won't  say  prosaic,  because  the 
word  has  been  debased.  I  suspect  by  the  poets  who  are 
always  uttering  base  currency  of  thoughts  and  words  and 
emotions.  Dear  me,  this  is  a  most  delightful  adventure." 

"Adventure?"  repeated  Sylvia. 

"Our  meeting,"  the  stranger  explained. 

"Do  you  call  that  an  adventure?"  said  Sylvia,  con- 
temptuously. "Why,  I've  had  adventures  much  more 
exciting  than  this." 

"I  told  you  that  your  temperament  was  anti-poetic," 
said  the  stranger.  "How  severe  you  are  with  my  poor 
gossamers.  You  are  like  the  Red  Queen.  You've  seen 
adventures  compared  with  which  this  is  really  an  ordinary 
afternoon  walk." 

"I  don't  understand  half  you're  saying,"  said  Sylvia. 
"Who's  the  Red  Queen?  Why  was  she  red?" 

"Why  was  Sylvia  Scarlett?"  the  stranger  laughed. 

"I  don't  think  that's  a  very  good  joke,"  said  Sylvia, 
solemnly. 

"It  wasn't,  and  to  make  my  penitence,  if  you'll  let  me, 
I'll  visit  you  at  Earl's  Court  and  present  you  with  copies  of 
Alice's  Adventures  in  Wonderland  and  through  The  Looking- 
glass." 

"Books,"  said  Sylvia,  in  a  satisfied  tone.  "All  right. 
When  will  you  come?  To-morrow?" 

The  stranger  nodded. 

"What  are  you?"  Sylvia  asked,  abruptly. 

"My  name  is  Iredale — Philip  Iredale.    No  profession." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  139 

"Are  you  what's  called  a  gentleman?"  Sylvia  went  on. 

"I  hope  most  people  would  so  describe  me,"  said  Mr. 
Iredale. 

"I  asked  you  that,"  Sylvia  said,  "because  I  never  met  a 
gentleman  before.  I  don't  think  Jimmy  Monkley  was  a 
gentleman,  and  Arthur  Madden  was  too  young.  Perhaps 
the  Emperor  of  Byzantium  was  a  gentleman." 

"I  hope  so  indeed,"  said  Mr.  Iredale.  "The  Palacologos 
family  is  an  old  one.  Did  you  meet  the  Emperor  in  the 
course  of  your  Oriental  studies?  Shall  I  meet  him  in  the 
Hall  of  a  Thousand  and  One  Marvels?" 

Sylvia  told  him  the  story  of  the  Emperor's  reception, 
which  seemed  to  amuse  him  very  much. 

"Where  do  you  live?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Well,  I  live  in  Hampshire  generally,  but  I  have  rooms 
in  the  Temple." 

"The  Temple  of  who?"  Sylvia  asked,  grandly. 

"Mammon  is  probably  the  dedication,  but  by  a  legal 
fiction  the  titular  god  is  suppressed." 

"Do  you  believe  in  God?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"My  dear  Miss  Scarlett,  I  protest  that  sucn  a  question 
so  abruptly  put  in  a  cemetery  is  most  unfair." 

"Don't  call  me  Miss  Scarlett.  It  makes  me  feel  like  a 
girl  in  a  shop.  Call  me  Sylvia.  That's  my  name." 

"Dear  me,  how  very  refreshing  you  are,"  said  Mr. 
Iredale.  "Do  you  know  I'm  positively  longing  for  to- 
morrow. But  meanwhile,  dear  child,  dear  girl,  we  have 
to-day.  What  shall  we  do  with  the  rest  of  it  ?  Let's  get  on 
top  of  a  'bus  and  ride  to  Kensington  Gardens.  Hallowed  as 
this  spot  is  both  by  the  mighty  dead  and  the  dear  living, 
I'm  tired  of  tombs." 

"  I  can't  go  on  the  top  of  a  'bus,"  Sylvia  said.  "  Because 
I've  not  got  any  petticoats  underneath  my  frock.  I  haven't 
saved  up  enough  money  to  buy  petticoats  yet.  I  had  to 
begin  with  chemises." 

"Then  we  must  find  a  hansom,"  said  Mr.  Iredale, 
gravely. 

They  drove  to  Kensington  Gardens  and  walked  under 
the  trees  to  Hyde  Park  Corner;  there  they  took  another 
hansom  and  drove  to  a  restaurant  with  very  comfortable 
chairs  and  delicious  things  to  eat.  Mr.  Iredale  and  Sylvia 


140  Sylvia    Scarlett 

talked  hard  all  the  time;  after  dinner  he  drove  her  back  to 
Finborough  Road  and  lifted  his  hat  when  she  waved  good- 
by  to  him  from  the  steps. 

Mabel  was  furiously  interested  by  Sylvia's  account  of 
her  day,  and  gave  her  much  advice. 

"Now  don't  let  everything  be  too  easy,"  she  said. 
"Remember  he's  rich  and  can  afford  to  spend  a  little 
money.  Don't  encourage  him  to  make  love  to  you  at  the 
very  commencement,  or  he'll  get  tired  and  then  you'll  be 
sorry." 

"Oh,  who's  thinking  about  making  love?"  Sylvia  ex- 
claimed. "That's  just  why  I've  enjoyed  myself  to-day. 
There  wasn't  a  sign  of  love-making.  He  told  me  I  was  the 
most  interesting  person  he'd  ever  met." 

"There  you  are,"  Mabel  said.  "There's  only  one  way 
a  girl  can  interest  a  man,  is  there?" 

Sylvia  burst  into  tears  and  stamped  her  foot  on  the  floor. 

"I  won't  believe  you,"  she  cried.  "I  don't  want  to 
believe  you." 

"Well,  there's  no  need  to  cry  about  it,"  Mabel  said. 
"Only  he'd  be  a  funny  sort  of  man  if  he  didn't  want  to 
make  love  to  you." 

"Well,  he  is  a  funny  sort  of  man,"  Sylvia  declared.  "And 
I  hope  he's  going  on  being  funny.  He's  coming  to  the 
Exhibition  to-morrow  and  you'll  see  for  yourself  how 
funny  he  is." 

Mabel  was  so  deeply  stirred  by  the  prospect  of  Mr. 
Iredale's  visit  that  she  practised  a  more  than  usually 
voluptuous  pose,  which  was  frustrated  by  her  fellow- 
favorite,  who  accused  her  of  pushing  her  great  legs  all  over 
the  place  and  invited  her  to  keep  to  her  own  cushions. 
Mabel  got  very  angry  and  managed  to  drop  a  burning  pas- 
tille on  her  companion's  trousers,  which  caused  a  scene  in 
the  harem  and  necessitated  the  intervention  of  Mr.  Woolfe. 

"She  did  it  for  the  purpose,  the  spiteful  thing,"  the  out- 
raged favorite  declared.  "Behaves  more  like  a  perform- 
ing seal  than  a  Turkish  lady,  and  then  burns  my  costume. 
No,  it's  no  good  trying  to  'my  dear'  me.  I've  stood  it 
long  enough  and  I'm  not  going  to  stand  it  no  longer." 

Mabel  expressed  an  opinion  that  the  rival  favorite  was 
a  vulgar  person;  luckily,  before  Mr.  Iredale  arrived  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  141 

quarrel  had  been  adjusted,  and  when  he  sat  down  on  the 
divan  and  received  a  cup  of  coffee  from  Sylvia,  whose 
brown  eyes  twinkled  merry  recognition  above  her  yashmak, 
the  two  favorites  were  languorously  fanning  the  perfumed 
airs  of  their  seclusion,  once  again  in  drowsy  accord. 

Mr.  Iredale  came  often  to  the  Hall  of  a  Thousand  and 
One  Marvels;  he  never  failed  to  bring  with  him  books  for 
Sylvia  and  he  was  always  eager  to  discuss  with  her  what 
she  had  last  read.  On  Sundays  he  used  to  take  her  out  to 
Richmond  or  Kew,  but  he  never  invited  her  to  visit  him  at 
his  rooms. 

"He's  awfully  gone  on  you,"  said  Mabel.  "Well,  I 
wish  you  the  best  of  luck,  I'm  sure,  for  he's  a  very 
nice  fellow." 

Mr.  Iredale  was  not  quite  so  enthusiastic  over  Mabel;  he 
often  questioned  Sylvia  about  her  friend's  conduct  and 
seemed  much  disturbed  by  the  materialism  and  looseness 
of  her  attitude  toward  life. 

"It  seems  dreadful,"  he  used  to  say  to  her,  "that  you 
can't  find  a  worthier  friend  than  that  blond  enormity.  I 
hope  she  never  introduces  you  to  any  of  her  men." 

Sylvia  assured  him  that  Mabel  was  much  too  jealous  to 
do  anything  of  the  sort. 

"Jealous!"  he  ejaculated.  "How  monstrous  that  a 
child  like  you  should  already  be  established  in  competition 
with  that.  Ugh!" 

June  passed  away  to  July.  Mr.  Iredale  told  Sylvia  that 
he  ought  to  be  in  the  country  by  now  and  that  he  could 
not  understand  himself.  One  day  he  asked  her  if  she  would 
like  to  live  in  the  country,  and  became  lost  in  meditation 
when  she  said  she  might.  Sylvia  delighted  in  his  company 
and  had  a  deep  affection  for  this  man  who  had  so  wonder- 
fully entered  into  her  life  without  once  shocking  her 
sensibility  or  her  pride.  She  understood,  however,  that  it 
was  easy  for  him  to  behave  himself,  because  he  had  all  he 
wanted;  nevertheless  the  companionship  of  a  man  of 
leisure  had  for  herself  such  charm  that  she  did  not  feel 
attracted  to  any  deeper  reflection  upon  moral  causes;  he 
was  lucky  to  be  what  he  was,  but  she  was  equally  lucky  to 
have  found  him  for  a  friend. 

Sometimes  when  he  inveighed  against  her  past  associates 


142  Sylvia    Scarlett 

and  what  he  called  her  unhappy  bringing  up,  she  felt  im- 
pelled to  defend  them. 

"You  see,  you  have  all  you  want,  Philip." 

Sylvia  had  learned  with  considerable  difficulty  to  call 
him  Philip;  she  could  never  get  rid  of  the  idea  that  he  was 
much  older  than  herself  and  that  people  who  heard  her  call 
him  by  his  Christian  name  would  laugh.  Even  now  she 
could  only  call  him  Philip  when  the  importance  of  the  re- 
mark was  enough  to  hide  what  still  seemed  an  unpardon- 
able kind  of  pertness. 

"You  think  I  have  all  I  want,  do  you?"  he  answered,  a 
little  bitterly.  "My  dear  child,  I'm  in  the  most  humiliating 
position  in  which  a  man  can  find  himself.  There  is  only  one 
thing  I  want,  but  I'm  afraid  to  make  the  effort  to  secure  it: 
I'm  afraid  of  being  laughed  at.  Sylvia  dear,  you  were 
wiser  than  you  knew  when  you  objected  to  calling  me 
Philip  for  that  very  reason.  I  wish  I  could  spread  my 
canvas  to  a  soldier's  wind  like  you  and  sail  into  life,  but 
I  can't.  I've  been  taught  to  tack,  and  I've  never  learned 
how  to  reach  harbor.  I  suppose  some  people,  in  spite  of 
our  system  of  education,  succeed  in  learning,"  he  sighed. 

"I  don't  understand  a  bit  what  you're  talking  about," 
she  said. 

"  Don't  you  ?  It  doesn't  matter.  I  was  really  talking  to 
myself,  which  is  very  rude.  Impose  a  penalty." 

"Admit  you  have  everything  you  want,"  Sylvia  insisted. 
"And  don't  be  always  running  down  poor  Jimmy  and  my 
father  and  every  one  I've  ever  known." 

"From  their  point  of  view  I  confess  I  have  everything  I 
want,"  he  agreed. 

On  another  occasion  Sylvia  asked  him  if  he  did  not  think 
she  ought  to  consider  religion  more  than  she  had  done. 
Being  so  much  in  Philip's  company  was  giving  her  a  desire 
to  experiment  with  the  habits  of  well-regulated  people,  and 
she  was  perplexed  to  find  that  he  paid  no  attention  to 
church-going. 

"Ah,  there  you  can  congratulate  yourself,"  he  said, 
emphatically.  "Whatever  was  deplorable  in  your  bring- 
ing up,  at  least  you  escaped  that  damnable  imposition, 
that  fraudulent  attempt  to  flatter  man  beyond  his  deserts." 

"Oh,  don't  use  so  many  long  words  all  at  once,"  Sylvia 


Sylvia    Scarlett  143 

begged.  "I  like  a  long  word  now  and  then,  because  I'm 
collecting  long  words,  but  I  can't  collect  them  and  under- 
stand what  you're  talking  about  at  the  same  time.  Do  you 
think  I  ought  to  go  to  church?" 

"No,  no,  a  thousand  times  no,"  Philip  replied.  "You've 
luckily  escaped  from  religion  as  a  social  observance.  Do 
you  feel  the  need  for  it?  Have  you  ineffable  longings?" 

"I  know  that  word,"  Sylvia  said.  "It  means  something 
that  can't  be  said  in  words,  doesn't  it?  Well,  I've  often 
had  longings  like  that,  especially  in  Hampstead,  but  no 
longings  that  had  anything  to  do  with  going  to  church. 
How  could  they  have,  if  they  were  ineffable?" 

"Quite  true,"  Philip  agreed.  "And  therefore  be  grate- 
ful that  you're  a  pagan.  If  ever  a  confounded  priest  gets 
hold  of  you  and  tries  to  bewitch  you  with  his  mumbo- 
jumbo,  send  for  me  and  I'll  settle  him.  No,  no,  going  to 
church  of  one's  own  free  will  is  either  a  drug  (sometimes  a 
stimulant,  sometimes  a  narcotic)  or  it's  mere  snobbery. 
In  either  case  it  is  a  futile  waste  of  time,  because  there  are 
so  many  problems  in  this  world — you're  one  of  the  most 
urgent — that  it's  criminal  to  avoid  their  solution  by  specu- 
lating upon  the  problem  of  the  next  world,  which  is  in- 
soluble." 

"But  is  there  another  world?"  she  asked. 

"I  don't  think  so." 

"And  all  those  announcements  in  the  cemetery  meant 
nothing?" 

"Nothing  but  human  vanity — the  vanity  of  the  dead 
and  the  vanity  of  the  living." 

"Thanks,"  Sylvia  said.  "I  thought  that  was  probably 
the  explanation." 

Mabel,  who  had  long  ago  admitted  that  Philip  was  just 
as  funny  as  Sylvia  had  described  him,  often  used  to  ask  her 
what  they  found  to  talk  about. 

"He  can't  be  interested  in  Earl's  Court,  and  you're  such 
a  kid.  I  can't  understand  it." 

"Well,  we  talked  about  religion  to-day,"  Sylvia  told 
her. 

"Oh,  that's  it,  is  it?"  Mabel  said,  very  knowingly. 
"He's  one  of  those  fellows  who  ought  to  have  been  a 
clergyman,  is  he?  I  knew  he  reminded  me  of  some  one. 

10 


144  Sylvia    Scarlett 

He's  the  walking  image  of  the  clergyman  where  we  used 
to  live  in  Clapham.  But  you  be  careful,  Sylvia.  It's  an 
old  trick,  that." 

"You're  quite  wrong.     He  hates  clergymen." 

"Oh,"  Mabel  exclaimed,  taken  aback  for  a  moment,  but 
quickly  recovering  herself.  "Oh,  well,  people  always  pre- 
tend to  hate  what  they  can't  get.  And  I  dare  say  he  wanted 
to  be  a  clergyman.  But  don't  let  him  try  to  convert  you. 
It's  an  old  trick  to  get  something  for  nothing.  And  I  know, 
my  dear." 

July  passed  away  into  August,  and  Sylvia,  buried 
for  so  many  hours  in  the  airless  Hall  of  a  Thousand 
and  One  Marvels,  was  flagging  visibly.  Philip  used  to 
spend  nearly  every  afternoon  and  evening  in  the  inner 
room  where  she  worked — so  many,  indeed,  that  Mr. 
Woolfe  protested  and  told  her  he  would  really  have  to 
put  her  back  into  the  outer  hall,  because  good  customers 
were  being  annoyed  by  her  admirer's  glaring  at  them 
through  his  glasses. 

Philip  was  very  much  worried  by  Sylvia's  wan  looks,  and 
urged  her  more  insistently  to  leave  her  job,  and  let  him 
provide  for  her.  But  having  vowed  to  herself  that  never 
again  would  she  put  herself  under  an  obligation  to  any- 
body, she  would  not  hear  of  leaving  the  Exhibition. 

One  Sunday  in  the  middle  of  August  Philip  took  Sylvia 
to  Oxford,  of  which  he  had  often  talked  to  her.  She 
enjoyed  the  day  very  much  and  delighted  him  by  the 
interest  she  took  in  all  the  colleges  they  visited;  but 
he  was  very  much  worried,  so  he  said,  by  the  approach 
of  age. 

"You  aren't  so  very  old,"  Sylvia  reassured  him.  "Old, 
but  not  very  old." 

"Fifteen  years  older  than  you,"  he  sighed. 

"Still,  you're  not  old  enough  to  be  my  father,"  she 
added,  encouragingly. 

In  the  afternoon  they  went  to  St.  Mary's  Walks  and  sat 
upon  a  bench  by  the  Cherwell.  Close  at  hand  a  Sabbath 
bell  chimed  a  golden  monotone;  Philip  took  Sylvia's  hand 
and  looked  right  into  her  face,  as  he  always  did  when  he 
was  not  wearing  his  glasses: 

"Little  delightful  thing,  if  you  won't  let  me  take  you 


Sylvia    Scarlett  145 

away  from  that  inferno  of  Earl's  Court,  will  you  marry 
me?  Not.  at  once,  because  it  wouldn't  be  fair  to  you  and 
it  wouldn't  be  fair  to  myself.  I'm  going  to  make  a  sugges- 
tion that  will  make  you  laugh,  but  it  is  quite  a  serious  sug- 
gestion. I  want  you  to  go  to  school." 

Sylvia  drew  back  and  stared  at  him  over  her  shoulder. 

"To  school?"  she  echoed.     "But  I'm  sixteen." 

"Lots  of  girls — most  girls  in  the  position  I  want  you  to 
take — are  still  at  school  then.  Only  a  year,  dear  child,  and 
then  if  you  will  have  me,  we'll  get  married.  I  don't  think 
you'd  be  bored  down  in  Hampshire.  I  have  thousands  of 
books  and  you  shall  read  them  all.  Don't  get  into  your 
head  that  I'm  asking  you  to  marry  me  because  I'm  sorry 
for  you — " 

"There's  nothing  to  be  sorry  for,"  Sylvia  interrupted, 
sharply. 

"I  know  there's  not,  and  I  want  you  terribly.  You 
fascinate  me  to  an  extent  I  never  could  have  thought  possi- 
ble for  any  woman.  I  really  haven't  cared  much  about 
women;  they  always  seemed  in  the  way.  I  do  believe  you 
would  be  happy  with  me.  We'll  travel  to  the  East  together. 
You  shall  visit  Japan  and  Turkey.  I  love  you  so  much, 
Sylvia.  Tell  me,  don't  you  love  me  a  little?" 

"I  like  you  very  much  indeed,"  she  answered,  gently. 
"Oh,  very,  very,  very  much.  Perhaps  I  love  you.  I 
don't  think  I  love  you,  because  if  I  loved  you  I  think  my 
heart  would  beat  much  faster  when  you  asked  me  to  marry 
you,  and  it  isn't  beating  at  all.  Feel." 

She  put  his  hand  upon  her  heart. 

"It  certainly  doesn't  seem  to  be  unusually  rapid,"  he 
agreed. 

Sylvia  looked  at  him  in  perplexity.  His  thin  face  was 
flushed,  and  the  golden  light  of  the  afternoon  gave  it  a 
warmer  glow;  his  very  blue  eyes  without  their  glasses  had 
such  a  wide-open  pleading  expression;  she  was  touched  by 
his  kindness. 

"If  you  think  I  ought  to  go  to  school,"  she  offered,  "I 
will  go  to  school." 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  question  in  his  eyes.  She  saw 
that  he  wanted  to  kiss  her,  and  she  pretended  she  thought 
he  was  dissatisfied  with  her  answer  about  school. 


146  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"I  won't  promise  to  marry  you,"  she  said.  "Because  I 
like  to  keep  promises  and  I  can't  say  now  what  I  shall 
be  like  in  a  year,  can  I?  I'm  changing  all  the  time. 
Only  I  do  like  you  very,  very,  very  much.  Don't  forget 
that." 

He  took  her  hand  and  kissed  it  with  the  courtesy  that  for 
her  was  almost  his  greatest  charm;  manners  seemed  to 
Sylvia  the  chief  difference  between  Philip  and  all  the  other 
people  she  had  known.  Once  he  had  told  her  she  had  very 
bad  manners,  and  she  had  lain  awake  half  the  night  in  her 
chagrin.  She  divined  that  the  real  reason  of  his  wanting 
her  to  go  to  school  was  his  wish  to  correct  her  manners. 
How  little  she  knew  about  him,  and  yet  she  had  been  asked 
to  marry  him.  His  father  and  mother  were  dead,  but  he 
had  a  sister  whom  she  would  have  to  meet. 

"Have  you  told  your  sister  about  me?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Not  yet,"  he  confessed.  "I  think  I  won't  tell  any- 
body about  you  except  the  lady  to  whose  care  I  am  going 
to  intrust  you." 

Sylvia  asked  him  how  long  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to 
ask  her  to  marry  him,  and  he  told  her  he  had  been  thinking 
about  it  for  a  long  time,  but  that  he  had  always  been  afraid 
at  the  last  moment. 

"Afraid  I  should  disgrace  you,  I  suppose?"  Sylvia 
said. 

He  put  on  his  glasses  and  coughed,  a  sure  sign  he  was 
embarrassed.  She  laughed. 

"And  of  course  there's  no  doubt  that  I  should  disgrace 
you.  I  probably  shall  now  as  a  matter  of  fact.  Mabel  will 
be  rather  sorry,"  she  went  on,  pensively.  "She  likes  me  to 
be  there  at  night  in  case  she  gets  frightened.  She  told  me 
once  that  the  only  reason  she  ever  went  wrong  was  because 
she  was  frightened  to  sleep  alone.  She  was  married  to  a 
commercial  traveler,  who,  of  course,  was  just  the  worst 
person  she  could  have  married,  because  he  was  always 
leaving  her  alone.  Poor  Mabel!" 

Philip  took  her  hand  again  and  said  in  a  tone  of  voice 
which  she  resented  as  adumbrating  already,  however 
faintly,  a  hint  of  ownership: 

"Sylvia  dear,  you  won't  talk  so  freely  as  that  in  the 
school,  will  you  ?  Promise  me  you  won't." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  147 

"But  it  used  to  amuse  you  when  I  talked  like  that,"  she 
said.  "You  mustn't  think  now  that  you've  got  the  right 
to  lecture  me." 

"My  dear  child,  it  doesn't  matter  what  you  say  to  me; 
I  understand.  But  some  people  might  not." 

"Well,  don't  say  I  didn't  warn  you,"  she  almost  sighed. 


CHAPTER  VI 

MISS  ASHLEY'S  school  for  young  ladies,  situated 
in  its  own  grounds  on  Campden  Hill,  was  con- 
sidered one  of  the  best  in  England;  a  day  or  two  after 
they  got  back  from  Oxford,  Philip  announced  to  Sylvia 
that  he  was  glad  to  say  Miss  Ashley  would  take  her 
as  a  pupil.  She  was  a  friend  of  his  family;  but  he  had' 
sworn  her  to  secrecy,  and  it  had  been  decided  between 
them  that  Sylvia  should  be  supposed  to  be  an  orphan 
educated  until  now  in  France. 

"Mayn't  I  tell  the  other  girls  that  I've  been  an  oda- 
lisque?" Sylvia  asked. 

"Good  heavens!    no!"  said  Philip,  earnestly. 

"But  I  was  looking  forward  to  telling  them,"  she  ex- 
plained. "Because  I'm  sure  it  would  amuse  them." 

Philip  smiled  indulgently  and  thought  she  would  find 
lots  of  other  ways  of  amusing  them.  He  had  told  Miss 
Ashley,  who,  by  the  way,  was  an  enthusiastic  rationalist, 
that  he  did  not  want  her  to  attend  the  outward  shows  of 
religion,  and  Miss  Ashley  had  assented,  though  as  a  school- 
mistress she  was  bound  to  see  that  her  other  pupils  went  to 
church  at  least  once  every  Sunday.  He  had  reassured  her 
about  the  bad  example  Sylvia  would  set  by  promising  to 
come  himself  and  take  her  out  every  Sunday  in  his  capac- 
ity as  guardian. 

"  You'll  be  glad  of  that,  won't  you  ?"  he  asked,  anxiously. 

"I  expect  so,"  Sylvia  said.  "But  of  course  I  may  find 
being  at  school  such  fun  that  I  sha'n't  want  to  leave  it." 

Again  Philip  smiled  indulgently  and  hoped  she  would. 
Of  course,  it  was  now  holiday-time,  but  Miss  Ashley  had 
quite  agreed  with  him  in  the  desirableness  of  Sylvia's  going 
to  Hornton  House  before  the  term  began.  She  would  be 
able  to  help  her  to  equip  herself  with  all  the  things  a  school- 
girl required.  He  knew,  for  instance,  that  she  was  short  of 


Sylvia    Scarlett  149 

various  articles  of  clothing.  Sylvia  could  take  Miss  Ashley 
completely  into  her  confidence,  but  even  with  her  he 
advised  a  certain  reticence  with  regard  to  some  of  her 
adventures.  She  was  of  course  a  woman  of  infinite  expe- 
rience and  extremely  broad-minded,  but  many  years  as  a 
schoolmistress  might  have  made  her  consider  some  things 
were  better  left  unsaid;  there  were  some  people,  particu- 
larly English  people,  who  were  much  upset  by  details. 
Perhaps  Sylvia  would  spare  her  the  details? 

"You  see,  my  dear  child,  you've  had  an  extraordinary 
number  of  odd  adventures  for  your  age,  and  they've  made 
you  what  you  are,  you  dear.  But  now  is  the  chance  of 
setting  them  in  their  right  relation  to  your  future  life. 
You  know,  I'm  tremendously  keen  about  this  one  year's 
formal  education.  You're  just  the  material  that  can  be 
perfected  by  academic  methods,  which  with  ordinary 
material  end  in  mere  barren  decoration." 

"I  don't  understand.  I  don't  understand,"  Sylvia  inter- 
rupted. 

"Sorry!  My  hobby-horse  has  bolted  with  me  and  left 
you  behind.  But  I  won't  try  to  explain  or  even  to  advise. 
I  leave  everything  to  you.  After  all,  you  are  you;  and  I'm 
the  last  person  to  wish  you  to  be  any  one  else." 

Philip  was  humming  excitedly  when  they  drove  up  to 
Hornton  House,  and  Sylvia  was  certainly  much  impressed 
by  its  Palladian  grandeur  and  the  garden  that  seemed  to 
spread  inimitably  behind  it.  She  felt  rather  shy  of  Miss 
Ashley  herself,  who  was  apparently  still  in  her  dressing- 
gown,  a  green-linen  dressing-gown  worked  in  front  with 
what  Sylvia  considered  were  very  bad  reproductions  of 
flowers  in  brownish  silk.  She  was  astonished  at  seeing  a 
woman  of  Miss  Ashley's  dignity  still  in  her  dressing-gown 
at  three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  but  she  was  still  more 
astonished  to  see  her  in  a  rather  battered  straw  hat,  appar- 
ently ready  to  go  shopping  in  Kensington  High  Street 
without  changing  her  attire.  She  looked  at  Philip,  who, 
however,  seemed  unaware  of  anything  unusual.  A  carriage 
was  waiting  for  them  when  they  went  out,  and  Philip  left 
her  with  Miss  Ashley,  promising  to  dine  at  Hornton  House 
that  night. 

The  afternoon  passed  away  rapidly  in  making  all  sorts 


150  Sylvia    Scarlett 

of  purchases,  even  of  trunks;  it  seemed  to  Sylvia  that 
thousands  of  pounds  must  have  been  spent  upon  her  outfit, 
and  she  felt  a  thrill  of  pride.  Everybody  behind  the  various 
counters  treated  Miss  Ashley  with  great  deference;  Sylvia 
was  bound  to  admit  that,  however  careless  she  might  be  of 
her  own  appearance,  she  was  splendidly  able  to  help  other 
people  to  choose  jolly  things.  They  drove  back  to  Hornton 
House  in  a  carriage  that  seemed  full  of  parcels,  though 
they  only  took  with  them  what  Miss  Ashley  considered 
immediately  important.  Tea  was  waiting  in  the  garden 
under  a  great  cedar-tree;  and  by  the  time  tea  was  finished 
Sylvia  was  sure  that  she  should  like  Miss  Ashley  and  that 
she  should  not  run  away  that  night,  which  she  had  made 
up  her  mind  to  do  unless  she  was  absolutely  contented 
with  the  prospect  of  her  new  existence.  She  liked  her  bed- 
room very  much,  and  the  noise  that  the  sparrows  made  in 
the  creeper  outside  her  window.  The  starched  maid- 
servant who  came  to  help  her  dress  for  dinner  rather 
frightened  her,  but  she  decided  to  be  very  French  in  order 
to  take  away  the  least  excuse  for  ridicule. 

Sylvia  thought  at  dinner  that  the  prospect  of  marriage 
had  made  Philip  seem  even  older,  or  perhaps  it  was  his 
assumption  of  guardianship  which  gave  him  this  added 
seriousness. 

"Of  course,  French  she  already  knows,"  he  was  saying, 
"though  it  might  be  as  well  to  revise  her  grammar  a  little. 
History  she  has  a  queer,  disjointed  knowledge  of — it  would 
be  as  well  to  fill  in  the  gaps.  I  should  like  her  to  learn  a 
little  Latin.  Then  there  are  mathematics  and  what  is 
called  science.  Of  course,  one  would  like  her  to  have  a 
general  acquaintance  with  both,  but  I  don't  want  to  waste 
time  with  too  much  elementary  stuff".  It  would  be  almost 
better  for  her  to  be  completely  ignorant  of  either." 

"I  think  you  will  have  to  leave  the  decision  to  me, 
Philip,"  said  Miss  Ashley,  in  that  almost  too  deliberately 
tranquil  voice,  which  Sylvia  felt  might  so  easily  become  in 
certain  circumstances  exasperating.  "I  think  you  may  rely 
on  my  judgment  where  girls  are  concerned." 

Philip  hastened  to  assure  Miss  Ashley  that  he  was  not 
presuming  to  dictate  to  her  greater  experience  of  educa- 
tion; he  only  wished  to  lay  stress  on  the  subjects  that  he 


Sylvia    Scarlett  151 

considered  would  be  most  valuable  for  the  life  Sylvia  was 
likely  to  lead. 

"I  have  a  class,"  said  Miss  Ashley,  "which  is  composed 
of  older  girls  and  of  which  the  routine  is  sufficiently  elastic 
to  fit  any  individual  case.  I  take  that  class  myself." 

Sylvia  half  expected  that  Miss  Ashley  would  suggest 
including  Philip  in  it,  if  he  went  on  talking  any  longer. 
Perhaps  Philip  himself  suspected  as  much,  for  he  said  no 
more  about  Sylvia's  education  and  talked  instead  about 
the  gravity  of  the  situation  in  South  Africa. 

Sylvia  was  vividly  aware  of  the  comfort  of  her  bedroom 
and  of  the  extraordinary  freshness  of  it  in  comparison  with 
all  the  other  rooms  she  had  so  far  inhabited.  Miss  Ashley 
faintly  reminded  her  of  her  mother,  not  that  there  was  the 
least  outward  resemblance  except  in  height,  for  Miss 
Ashley's  hair  was  gray,  whereas  her  mother's  until  the  day 
of  her  death  had  kept  all  its  lustrous  darkness.  Yet  both 
wore  their  hair  in  similar  fashion,  combed  up  high  from  the 
forehead  so  as  to  give  them  a  majestic  appearance.  Her 
mother's  eyes  had  been  of  a  deep  and  glowing  brown  set  in 
that  pale  face;  Miss  Ashley's  eyes  were  small  and  gray, 
and  her  complexion  had  the  hard  rosiness  of  an  apple.  The 
likeness  between  the  two  women  lay  rather  in  the  posses- 
sion of  a  natural  authority  which  warned  one  that  dis- 
obedience would  be  an  undertaking  and  defiance  an 
impossibility.  Sylvia  rejoiced  in  the  idea  of  being  under 
control;  it  was  invigorating,  like  the  delicious  torment  of  a 
cold  bath.  Of  course  she  had  no  intention  of  being  con- 
trolled in  big  things,  but  she  was  determined  to  submit 
over  little  things  for  the  sheer  pleasure  of  submitting  to 
Miss  Ashley,  who  was,  moreover,  likely  to  be  always  right. 
In  the  morning,  when  she  came  down  in  one  of  her  new 
frocks,  her  hair  tied  back  with  a  big  brown  bow,  and  found 
Miss  Ashley  sitting  in  the  sunny  green  window  of  the 
dining-room,  reading  the  Morning  Post,  she  congratulated 
herself  upon  the  positive  pleasure  that  such  a  getting  up 
was  able  to  give  her  and  upon  this  new  sense  of  spacious- 
ness that  such  a  beginning  of  the  day  was  able  to  provide. 

"You're  looking  at  my  dress,"  said  Miss  Ashley, 
pleasantly.  "When  you're  my  age  you'll  abandon  fashion 
and  adopt  what  is  comfortable  and  becoming." 


152  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"I  thought  it  was  a  dressing-gown  yesterday,"  Sylvia 
admitted. 

"Rather  an  elaborate  dressing-gown."  Miss  Ashley 
laughed.  "I'm  not  so  vain  as  all  that." 

Sylvia  wondered  what  she  would  have  said  to  some  of 
Mabel's  dressing-gowns.  Now  that  she  was  growing  used 
to  Miss  Ashley's  attire,  she  began  to  think  she  rather  liked 
it.  This  gown  of  peacock-blue  linen  was  certainly  attrac- 
tive, and  the  flowers  embroidered  upon  its  front  were 
clearly  recognizable  as  daisies. 

During  the  fortnight  before  school  reopened  Sylvia  gave 
Miss  Ashley  a  good  deal  of  her  confidence,  and  found 
her  much  less  shocked  by  her  experiences  than  Philip  had 
been.  She  told  her  that  she  felt  rather  ungrateful  in  so 
abruptly  cutting  herself  ofF  from  Mabel,  who  had  been 
very  kind  to  her;  but  on  this  point  Miss  Ashley  was  firm  in 
her  agreement  with  Philip,  and  would  not  hear  of  Sylvia's 
making  any  attempt  to  see  Mabel  again. 

"You  are  lucky,  my  dear,  in  having  only  one  person 
whose  friendship  you  are  forced  to  give  up,  as  it  seems  to 
you,  a  little  harshly.  Great  changes  are  rarely  made  with 
so  slight  an  effort  of  separation.  I  am  not  in  favor  person- 
ally of  violent  uprootings  and  replantings,  and  it  was  only 
because  you  were  in  such  a  solitary  position  that  I  con- 
sented to  do  what  Philip  asked.  Your  friend  Mabel  was, 
I  am  sure,  exceedingly  kind  to  you;  but  you  are  much  too 
young  to  repay  her  kindness.  It  is  the  privilege  of  the  very 
young  to  be  heartless.  From  what  you  have  told  me,  you 
have  often  been  heartless  about  other  people,  so  I  don't 
think  you  need  worry  about  Mabel.  Besides,  let  me  assure 
you  that  Mabel  herself  would  be  far  from  enjoying  any 
association  with  you  that  included  Hornton  House." 

Sylvia  had  no  arguments  to  bring  forward  against  Miss 
Ashley;  nevertheless,  she  felt  guilty  of  treating  Mabel 
shabbily,  and  wished  that  she  could  have  explained  to  her 
that  it  was  not  really  her  fault. 

Miss  Ashley  took  her  once  or  twice  to  the  play,  which 
Sylvia  enjoyed  more  than  music-halls.  In  the  library  at 
Hornton  House  she  found  plenty  of  books  to  read,  and 
Miss  Ashley  was  willing  to  talk  about  them  in  a  very 
interesting  way.  Philip  came  often  to  see  her  and  told  her 


Sylvia    Scarlett  153 

how  much  Miss  Ashley  liked  her  and  how  pleased  they 
both  were  to  see  her  settling  down  so  easily  and  quickly. 

The  night  before  term  began  the  four  assistant  mis- 
tresses arrived;  their  names  were  Miss  Pinck,  Miss  Primer, 
Miss  Hossack,  and  Miss  Lee.  Sylvia  was  by  this  time 
sufficiently  at  home  in  Hornton  House  to  survive  the 
ordeal  of  introduction  without  undue  embarrassment, 
though,  to  Miss  Ashley's  amusement,  she  strengthened 
her  French  accent.  Miss  Pinck,  the  senior  assistant 
mistress,  was  a  very  small  woman  with  a  sharp  chin  and 
knotted  fingers,  two  features  which  contrasted  noticeably 
with  her  general  plumpness.  She  taught  History  and 
English  Literature  and  had  an  odd  habit,  when  she  was 
speaking,  of  suddenly  putting  her  hands  behind  her  back, 
shooting  her  chin  forward,  and  screwing  up  her  eyes  so 
fiercely  that  the  person  addressed  involuntarily  drew 
back  in  alarm.  Sylvia,  to  whom  this  gesture  became  very 
familiar,  used  to  wonder  if  in  the  days  of  her  vanity 
Miss  Pinck  had  cultivated  it  to  avoid  displaying  her 
fingers,  so  that  from  long  practice  her  chin  had  learned 
to  replace  the  forefinger  in  impressing  a  fact. 

The  date  was  1689,  Miss  Pinck  would  say,  and  one 
almost  expected  to  see  a  pencil  screwed  into  her  chin  which 
would  actually  write  the  figures  upon  somebody's  note- 
book. 

Miss  Primer  was  a  thin,  melancholy,  and  sandy-haired 
woman,  who  must  have  been  very  pretty  before  her  face 
was  netted  with  innumerable  small  lines  that  made  her 
look  as  if  birds  had  been  scratching  on  it  when  she  was 
asleep.  Miss  Primer  took  an  extremely  gloomy  view  of 
everything,  and  with  the  prospect  of  war  in  South  Africa 
she  arrived  in  a  condition  of  exalted,  almost  ecstatic 
depression;  she  taught  Art,  which  at  Hornton  House  was 
no  cure  for  pessimism.  Miss  Hossack,  the  Mathematical 
and  Scientific  mistress,  did  not  have  much  to  do  with 
Sylvia;  she  was  a  robust  woman  with  a  loud  voice  who 
liked  to  be  asked  questions.  Finally  there  was  Miss  Lee, 
who  taught  music  and  was  the  particular  adoration  of 
every  girl  in  the  school,  including  Sylvia.  She  was  usually 
described  as  "ethereal,"  "angelic,"  or  "divine."  One  girl 
with  a  taste  for  painting  discovered  that  she  was  her  ideal 


154  Sylvia    Scarlett 

conception  of  St.  Cecilia;  this  naturally  roused  the 
jealousy  of  rival  adorers  that  would  not  be  "copy-cats," 
until  one  of  them  discovered  that  Miss  Lee,  whose  first 
name  was  Mary,  had  Annabel  for  a  second  name,  the  very 
mixture  of  the  poetic  and  the  intimate  that  was  required. 
Sylvia  belonged  neither  to  the  Cecilias  nor  to  the  Annabels, 
but  she  loved  dear  Miss  Lee  none  the  less  deeply  and 
passed  exquisite  moments  in  trying  to  play  the  dementi 
her  mistress  wanted  her  to  learn. 

"What  a  strange  girl  you  are,  Sylvia!"  Miss  Lee  used 
to  say.  "Anybody  would  think  you  had  been  taught 
music  by  an  accompanist.  You  don't  seem  to  have  any 
notion  of  a  piece,  but  you  really  play  accompaniments 
wonderfully.  It's  not  mere  vamping." 

Sylvia  wondered  what  Miss  Lee  would  have  thought  of 
Jimmy  Monkley  and  the  Pink  Pierrots. 

The  afternoon  that  the  girls  arrived  at  Hornton  House 
Sylvia  was  sure  that  nothing  could  keep  her  from  running 
away  that  night;  the  prospect  of  facing  the  chattering, 
giggling  mob  that  thronged  the  hitherto  quiet  hall  was 
overwhelming.  From  the  landing  above  she  leaned  over 
to  watch  them,  unable  to  imagine  what  she  would  talk 
about  to  them  or  what  they  would  talk  about  to  her.  It 
was  Miss  Lee  who  saved  the  situation  by  inviting  Sylvia 
to  meet  four  of  the  girls  at  tea  in  her  room  and  cleverly 
choosing,  as  Sylvia  realized  afterward,  the  four  leaders  of 
the  four  chief  sets.  Who  would  not  adore  Miss  Lee? 

"Oh,  Miss  Lee,  did  you  notice  Gladys  and  Enid  Worst- 
ley?"  Muriel  ejaculated,  accentuating  some  of  her  words 
like  the  notes  of  an  unevenly  blown  harmonium,  and  ex- 
plaining to  Sylvia  in  a  sustained  tremolo  that  these  twins, 
whose  real  name  was  Worsley,  were  always  called  Worstley 
because  it  was  impossible  to  decide  which  was  more 
wicked.  "Oh,  Miss  Lee,  they've  got  the  most  lovely 
dresses,"  she  went  on,  releasing  every  stop  in  a  diapason  of 
envy.  "Simply  gorgeously  beautiful.  I  do  think  it's  a 
shame  to  dress  them  up  like  that.  I  do,  really" 

Sylvia  made  a  mental  note  to  cultivate  this  pair  not  for 
their  dresses,  but  for  their  behavior.  Muriel  was  all  very 
well,  but  those  eyebrows  eternally  arched  and  those  eyes 
eternally  staring  out  of  her  head  would  sooner  or  later 


Sylvia    Scarlett  155 

have  most  irresistibly  to  be  given  real  cause  for  amaze- 
ment. 

"Their  mother  likes  them  to  be  prettily  dressed,"  said 
Miss  Lee. 

"Of  course  she  does,"  Gwendyr  put  in,  primly.  "She 
was  an  actress." 

To  hell  with  Gwendyr,  thought  Sylvia.  Why  shouldn't 
their  mother  have  been  an  actress? 

"Oh,  but  they're  so  conceited!"  said  Dorothy.  "Enid 
Worsley  never  can  pass  a  glass,  and  their  frocks  are  most 
frightfully  short.  Don't  you  remember  when  they  danced 
at  last  breaking-up?" 

"This  is  getting  unbearable,"  Sylvia  thought. 

"I  think  they're  rather  dears,"  Phyllis  drawled. 
"They're  jolly  pretty,  anyway." 

Sylvia  looked  at  Phyllis  and  decided  that  she  was  jolly 
pretty,  too,  with  her  golden  hair  and  smocked  linen  frock  of 
old  rose;  she  would  like  to  be  friends  with  Phyllis.  The 
moment  had  come,  however,  when  she  must  venture  all 
her  future  on  a  single  throw.  She  must  either  shock  Miss 
Lee  and  the  four  girls  irretrievably  or  she  must  be  hence- 
forth accepted  at  Hornton  House  as  herself;  there  must  be 
none  of  these  critical  sessions  about  Sylvia  Scarlett.  She 
pondered  for  a  minute  or  two  the  various  episodes  of  her 
past.  Then  suddenly  she  told  them  how  she  had  run  away 
from  school  in  France,  arrived  in  England  without  a 
penny,  and  earned  her  living  as  an  odalisque  at  the  Exhibi- 
tion. Which  would  she  be,  she  asked,  when  she  saw  the 
girls  staring  at  her  open-mouthed  now  with  real  amaze- 
ment, villain  or  heroine?  She  became  a  heroine,  especially 
to  Gladys  and  Enid,  with  whom  she  made  friends  that 
night,  and  who  showed  her  in  strictest  secrecy  two  powder- 
puffs  and  a  tin  of  Turkish  cigarettes. 

There  were  moments  when  Sylvia  was  sad,  especially 
when  war  broke  out  and  so  many  of  the  girls  had  photo- 
graphs of  brothers  and  cousins  and  friends  in  uniform,  not 
to  mention  various  generals  whose  ability  was  as  yet  un- 
questioned. She  did  not  consider  the  photograph  of  Philip 
a  worthy  competitor  of  these  and  begged  him  to  enlist, 
which  hurt  his  feelings.  Nevertheless,  her  adventures  as 
an  odalisque  were  proof  in  the  eyes  of  the  girls  against 


156  Sylvia    Scarlett 

martial  relations;  their  only  regret  was  that  the  Exhibition 
closed  before  they  had  time  to  devise  a  plot  to  visit  the 
Hall  of  a  Thousand  and  One  Marvels  and  be  introduced  by 
Sylvia  to  the  favorites  of  the  harem. 

Miss  Ashley  was  rather  cross  with  Sylvia  for  her  revela- 
tions and  urged  her  as  a  personal  favor  to  herself  not  to 
make  any  more.  Sylvia  explained  the  circumstances  quite 
frankly  and  promised  that  she  would  not  offend  again; 
but  she  pointed  out  that  the  girls  were  all  very  inquisitive 
about  Philip  and  asked  how  she  was  to  account  for  his 
taking  her  out  every  Sunday. 

"He's  your  guardian,  my  dear.  What  could  be  more 
natural?" 

"Then  you  must  tell  him  not  to  blush  and  drop  his 
glasses  when  the  girls  tell  him  I'm  nearly  ready.  They  all 
think  he's  in  love  with  me." 

"Well,  it  doesn't  matter,"  said  Miss  Ashley,  impatiently. 

"But  it  does  matter,"  Sylvia  contradicted.  "Because 
even  if  he  is  going  to  marry  me  he's  not  the  sort  of  lover 
one  wants  to  put  in  a  frame,  now  is  he?  That's  why  I 
bought  that  photograph  of  George  Alexander  which  Miss 
Pinck  made  such  a  fuss  about.  I  must  have  a  secret 
sorrow.  All  the  girls  have  secret  sorrows  this  term." 

Miss  Ashley  shook  her  head  gravely,  but  Sylvia  was  sure 
she  was  laughing  like  herself. 

Sylvia's  chief  friend  was  Phyllis  Markham — the  twins 
were  only  fourteen — and  the  two  of  them  headed  a  society 
for  toleration,  which  was  designed  to  contend  with  stupid 
and  ill-natured  criticism.  The  society  became  so  influen- 
tial and  so  tolerant  that  the  tone  of  the  school  was  con- 
sidered in  danger,  especially  by  Miss  Primer,  who  lamented 
it  much,  together  with  the  reverses  in  South  Africa;  and 
when  after  the  Christmas  holidays  (which  Sylvia  spent 
with  Miss  Ashley  at  Bournemouth)  a  grave  defeat 
coincided  with  the  discovery  that  the  Worsleys  were 
signaling  from  their  window  to  some  boys  in  a  house 
opposite,  Miss  Primer  in  a  transport  of  woe  took  up  the 
matter  with  the  head-mistress.  Miss  Ashley  called  a 
conference  of  the  most  influential  girls,  at  which  Sylvia 
was  present,  and  with  the  support  of  Phyllis  maintained 
that  the  behavior  of  the  twins  had  been  much  exaggerated. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  157 

"But  in  their  nightgowns,"  Miss  Primer  wailed.  "The 
policeman  at  the  corner  must  have  seen  them.  At  such  a 
time,  too,  with  these  deadful  Boers  winning  everywhere. 
And  their  hair  streaming  over  their  shoulders." 

"It  always  is,"  said  Sylvia. 

Miss  Ashley  rebuked  her  rather  sharply  for  interrupting. 

"A  bull's-eye  lantern.  The  room  reeked  of  hot  metal. 
I  could  not  read  the  code.  I  took  it  upon  myself  to  punish 
them  with  an  extra  hour's  freehand  to-day.  But  the 
punishment  is  most  inadequate.  I  detect  a  disturbing 
influence  right  through  the  school." 

Miss  Ashley  made  a  short  speech  in  which  she  pointed 
out  the  responsibilities  of  the  older  girls  in  such  matters 
and  emphasized  the  vulgarity  of  the  twins'  conduct.  No 
one  wished  to  impute  nasty  motives  to  them,  but  it  must  be 
clearly  understood  that  the  girls  of  Hornton  House  could 
not  and  should  not  be  allowed  to  behave  like  servants. 
She  relied  upon  Muriel  Battersby,  Dorothy  Hearne, 
Gwendyr  Jones,  Phyllis  Markham,  Georgina  Roe,  Helen 
Macdonald,  and  Sylvia  Scarlett  to  prevent  in  future  such 
unfortunate  incidents  as  this  that  had  been  brought  to 
her  notice  by  Miss  Primer,  she  was  sure  much  against 
Miss  Primer's  will. 

Miss  Primer  at  these  words  threw  up  her  eyes  to  indicate 
the  misery  she  had  suffered  before  she  had  been  able  to 
bring  herself  to  the  point  of  reporting  the  twins.  Phyllis 
whispered  to  Sylvia  that  Miss  Primer  looked  like  a  dying 
duck  in  a  thunder-storm,  a  phrase  which  she  now  heard  for 
the  first  time  and  at  which  she  laughed  aloud. 

Miss  Ashley  paused  in  her  discourse  and  fixed  Sylvia 
with  her  gray  eyes  in  pained  interrogation;  Miss  Pinck's 
chin  shot  out;  Miss  Lee  bit  her  under  lip  and  tenderly 
shook  her  head;  the  other  girls  stared  at  their  laps  and 
tried  to  look  at  one  another  without  moving  their  heads. 
Phyllis  quickly  explained  that  it  was  she  who  had  made 
Sylvia  laugh. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry,  Miss  Ashley,"  she  drawled. 

"I'm  glad  to  hear  that  you  are  very  sorry,"  said  Miss 
Ashley,  "but  Sylvia  must  realize  when  it  is  permissible  and 
when  it  is  not  permissible  to  laugh.  I'm  afraid  I  must  ask 
her  to  leave  the  room." 


158  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"I  ought  to  go,  too,"  Phyllis  declared.  "I  made  her 
laugh." 

"I'm  sure,  Phyllis,  that  to  yourself  your  wit  seems 
irresistible.  Pray  let  us  have  an  opportunity  of  judging." 

"Well,  I  said  that  Miss  Primer  looked  like  a  dying  duck 
in  a  thunder-storm." 

The  horrified  amazement  of  everybody  in  the  room 
expressed  itself  in  a  gasp  that  sounded  like  a  ghostly,  an 
infinitely  attenuated  scream  of  dismay.  Sylvia,  partly 
from  nervousness,  partly  because  the  simile  even  on 
repetition  appealed  to  her  sense  of  the  ridiculous,  laughed 
aloud  for  a  second  time — laughed,  indeed,  with  a  kind  of 
guffaw  the  sacrilegious  echoes  of  which  were  stifled  in  an 
appalled  silence. 

"Sylvia  Scarlett  and  Phyllis  Markham  will  both  leave 
the  room  immediately/'  said  Miss  Ashley.  "I  will  speak 
to  them  later." 

Outside  the  study  of  the  head-mistress,  Sylvia  and 
Phyllis  looked  at  each  other  like  people  who  have  jointly 
managed  to  break  a  mirror. 

"What  will  she  do?" 

"Sylvia,  I  simply  couldn't  help  it.  I  simply  couldn't 
bear  them  all  any  longer." 

"My  dear,  I  know.    Oh,  I  think  it  was  wonderful  of  you." 

Sylvia  laughed  heartily  for  the  third  time,  and  just  at 
this  moment  the  twins,  who  were  the  original  cause  of  all 
the  commotion,  came  sidling  up  to  know  what  everybody 
had  said. 

"You  little  beasts  with  your  bull's-eye  lamps  and  your 
naughtiness,"  Phyllis  cried.  "I  expect  we  shall  all  be 
expelled.  What  fun!  I  shall  get  some  hunting.  Oh, 
three  cheers,  I  say!" 

"Of  course  you  know  why  Miss  Primer  was  really  in 
such  a  wax?"  Gladys  asked,  with  the  eyes  of  an  angel  and 
the  laugh  of  a  fairy. 

"No,  let  me  tell,  Gladys,"  Enid  burst  in.  "You  know  I 
won  the  toss.  We  tossed  up  which  should  tell  and  I  won. 
You  are  a  chiseler.  You  see,  when  Miss  Primer  came 
tearing  up  into  our  room  we  turned  the  lamps  onto  her, 
and  she  was  simply  furious  because  she  thought  everybody 
in  the  street  could  see  her  in  that  blue-flannel  wrapper." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  159 

"Which,  of  course,  they  could,"  Sylvia  observed. 

"Of  course!"  the  twins  shrieked  together.  "And  the 
boys  opposite  clapped,  and  she  heard  them  and  tried  to 
pull  down  the  blind,  and  her  wrapper  came  open  and  she 
was  wearing  a  chest-protector!" 

The  interview  with  Miss  Ashley  was  rather  distressing, 
because  she  took  from  the  start  the  altogether  unexpected 
line  of  blaming  Phyllis  and  Sylvia  not  for  the  breach  of 
discipline,  but  for  the  wound  they  had  inflicted  upon  Miss 
Primer.  All  that  had  seemed  fine  and  honest  and  brave 
and  noble  collapsed  immediately;  it  was  impossible  after 
Miss  Ashley's  words  not  to  feel  ashamed,  and  both  the 
girls  offered  to  beg  Miss  Primer's  pardon.  Miss  Ashley 
said  no  more  about  the  incident  after  this,  though  she 
took  rather  an  unfair  advantage  of  their  chastened  spirits 
by  exacting  a  promise  that  they  would  in  common  with 
the  rest  of  the  school  leaders  set  their  faces  against  the 
encouragement  of  such  behavior  as  that  of  the  twins  last 
night. 

The  news  from  South  Africa  was  so  bad  that  Miss 
Primer's  luxury  of  grief  could  scarcely  have  been  height- 
ened by  Phyllis's  and  Sylvia's  rudeness;  however,  she 
wept  a  few  tears,  patted  their  hands,  and  forgave  them. 
A  few  days  afterward  she  was  granted  the  boon  of  another 
woe,  which  she  shared  with  the  whole  school,  in  the  news 
of  Miss  Lee's  approaching  marriage.  Any  wedding  would 
have  upset  Miss  Primer,  but  in  this  case  the  sorrow  was 
rendered  three  times  as  poignant  by  the  fact  that  Miss 
Lee  was  going  to  marry  a  soldier  under  orders  for  the 
front.  This  romantic  accessory  could  not  fail  to  thrill  the 
girls,  though  it  was  not  enough  to  compensate  for  the  loss 
of  their  beloved  Miss  Lee.  Rivalries  between  the  Cecilias 
and  Annabels  were  forever  finished;  several  girls  had 
been  learning  Beethoven's  Pathetic  Sonata  and  the 
amount  of  expression  put  into  it  would,  they  hoped,  show 
Miss  Lee  the  depth  of  their  emotion  when  for  the  last  time 
these  frail  fingers  so  lightly  corrected  their  touch,  when 
for  the  last  time  that  delicate  pencil  inscribed  her  direc- 
tions upon  their  music. 

"Of  course  the  school  will  never  be  the  same  without 
her,"  said  Muriel. 

11 


160  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"I  shall  write  home  and  ask  if  I  can't  take  up  Italian 
instead  of  music,"  said  Dorothy. 

"Fancy  playing  duets  with  any  one  but  Miss  Lee,"  said 
Gwendyr.  "The  very  idea  makes  me  shudder." 

"Perhaps  we  shall  have  a  music-master  now,"  said 
Gladys. 

Whereupon  everybody  told  her  she  was  a  heartless 
thing.  Poor  Gladys,  who  really  loved  Miss  Lee  as  much 
as  anybody,  retired  to  her  room  and  cried  for  the  rest  of 
the  evening,  until  she  was  consoled  by  Enid,  who  pointed 
out  that  now  she  must  use  her  powder-puff. 

For  Sylvia  the  idea  of  Miss  Lee's  departure  and  marriage 
was  desolating;  it  was  an  abrupt  rending  of  half  the  ties 
that  bound  her  to  Hornton  House.  Phyllis,  Miss  Ashley, 
and  the  twins  were  all  that  really  remained,  and  Phyllis 
was  always  threatening  to  persuade  her  people  to  take  her 
awray  when  the  weather  was  tolerably  warm,  so  deeply  did 
she  resent  the  loss  of  hunting.  It  was  curious  how  much 
more  Phyllis  meant  to  her  than  Philip,  so  much,  indeed, 
that  she  had  never  confided  in  her  that  she  was  going  to 
marry  Philip.  How  absurd  that  two  names  so  nearly  alike 
could  be  in  the  one  case  so  beautiful,  in  the  other  so  ugly. 
Yet  she  was  still  very  fond  of  Philip  and  she  still  enjoyed 
going  out  with  him  on  Sundays,  even  though  it  meant 
being  deprived  of  pleasant  times  with  Phyllis.  She  had 
warned  Philip  that  she  might  get  too  fond  of  school,  and 
he  had  smiled  in  that  superior  way  of  his.  Ought  she  to 
marry  him  at  all?  He  had  been  so  kind  to  her  that  if  she 
refused  to  marry  him  she  would  have  to  run  away,  for  she 
could  not  continue  under  an  obligation.  Why  did  people 
want  to  marry  ?  Why  must  she  marry  ?  Worst  of  all,  why 
must  Miss  Lee  marry?  But  these  were  questions  that  not 
even  Miss  Hossack  would  be  able  to  answer.  Ah,  if  it 
had  only  been  Miss  Hossack  who  had  been  going  to  marry. 
Sylvia  began  to  make  up  a  rhyme  about  Miss  Hossack 
marrying  a  Cossack  and  going  for  her  honeymoon  to  the 
Trossachs,  where  Helen  Macdonald  lived. 

All  the  girls  had  subscribed  to  buy  Miss  Lee  a  dressing- 
case,  which  they  presented  to  her  one  evening  after  tea 
with  a  kind  of  dismal  beneficence,  as  if  they  were  laying  a 
wreath  upon  her  tomb.  Next  morning  she  went  away  by 


Sylvia    Scarlett  161 

an  early  train  to  the  north  of  England,  and  after  lunch 
every  girl  retired  with  the  secret  sorrow  that  now  had  more 
than  fashion  to  commend  it.  Sylvia's  sorrow  was  an 
aching  regret  that  she  had  not  told  Miss  Lee  more  about 
herself  and  her  life  and  Philip;  now  it  was  too  late.  She 
met  the  twins  wandering  disconsolately  enlaced  along  the 
corridor  outside  her  room. 

"Oh,  Sylvia,  dearest  Sylvia!"  they  moaned.  "We've 
lost  our  duet  with  Miss  Lee's  fingering." 

"I'll  help  you  to  look  for  it." 

"Oh,  but  we  lost  it  on  purpose,  because  we  didn't  like 
it,  and  the  next  day  Miss  Lee  said  she  was  going  to  be 
married." 

Sylvia  asked  where  they  lost  it. 

"Oh,  we  put  it  in  an  envelope  and  posted  it  to  the 
Bishop  of  London." 

Sylvia  suggested  they  should  write  to  the  Bishop  and 
explain  the  circumstances  in  which  the  duet  was  sent  to 
him;  he  would  no  doubt  return  it. 

"Oh  no,"  said  the  twins,  mournfully.  "We  never  put  a 
stamp  on  and  we  wrote  inside,  'A  token  of  esteem  and  re- 
gard from  two  sinners  who  you  confirmed.'  How  can  we 
ask  for  it  back  ?" 

Sylvia  embraced  the  twins,  and  the  three  of  them 
wandered  in  the  sad  and  wintry  garden  until  it  was  time 
for  afternoon  school. 

The  next  day  happened  to  be  Sunday,  and  Philip  came 
as  usual  to  take  Sylvia  out.  He  had  sent  her  the  evening 
before  an  overcoat  trimmed  with  gray  squirrel,  which,  if 
it  had  not  arrived  after  Miss  Lee's  departure,  would  have 
been  so  much  more  joyfully  welcomed.  Philip  asked  her 
why  she  was  so  sad  and  if  the  coat  did  not  please  her. 
She  told  him  about  its  coming  after  Miss  Lee  had  gone, 
and,  as  usual,  he  had  a  lot  to  say: 

"You  strange  child,  how  quickly  you  have  adopted  the 
outlook  and  manners  of  the  English  school-girl.  One 
would  say  that  you  had  never  been  anything  else.  How 
absurd  I  was  to  be  afraid  that  you  were  a  wild  bird  whom 
I  had  caught  too  late.  I'm  quite  positive  now  that  you'll  be 
happy  with  me  down  in  Hampshire.  I'm  sorry  you've  lost 
Miss  Lee.  A  charming  woman,  I  thought,  and  very  culti- 


162  Sylvia    Scarlett 

vated.  Miss  Ashley  will  miss  her  greatly,  but  she  herself 
will  be  glad  to  get  away  from  music-teaching.  It  must  be 
an  atrocious  existence." 

Here  was  a  new  point  of  view  altogether.  Could  it  really 
be  possible  that  those  delicious  hours  with  Miss  Lee  were 
a  penance  to  the  mistress?  Sylvia  looked  at  Philip  angrily, 
for  she  found  it  unforgivable  in  him  to  destroy  her  illusions 
like  this.  He  did  not  observe  her  expression  and  continued 
his  monologue: 

"Really  atrocious.  Exercises!  Scales!  Other  people's 
chilblains!  A  creaking  piano-stool!  What  a  purgatory! 
And  all  to  teach  a  number  of  young  women  to  inflict  an 
objectionable  noise  upon  their  friends  and  relations." 

"Thanks,"  Sylvia  broke  in.  "You  won't  catch  me 
playing  again." 

"I'm  not  talking  about  you,"  Philip  said.  "You  have 
temperament.  You're  different  from  the  ordinary  school- 
girl." He  took  her  arm  affectionately.  "You're  you,  dear 
Sylvia." 

"And  yours,"  she  added,  sullenly.  "I  thought  you  said 
just  now  that  I  was  just  like  any  other  English  school-girl 
and  that  you  were  so  happy  about  it." 

"I  said  you'd  wonderfully  adopted  the  outlook,"  Philip 
corrected.  "Not  quite  the  same  thing." 

"Oh,  well,  take  your  horrible  coat,  because  I  don't 
want  it,"  Sylvia  exclaimed,  and,  rapidly  unbuttoning 
her  new  overcoat,  she  flung  it  on  the  pavement  at 
his  feet. 

Nobody  was  in  sight  at  the  moment,  so  Philip  did  not 
get  angry. 

"Now  don't  tell  me  it's  illogical  to  throw  away  only  the 
coat  and  not  undress  myself  completely.  I  know  quite  well 
that  everything  I've  got  on  is  yours." 

'Oh  no,  it's  not,"  Philip  said,  gently.    "It's  yours." 

'But  you  paid  for  everything." 

'No,  you  paid  yourself,"  he  insisted. 

'How?" 

'By  being  Sylvia.  Come  along,  don't  trample  on  your 
poor  coat.  There's  a  most  detestable  wind  blowing." 

He  picked  up  the  offending  overcoat  and  helped  her  into 
it  again  with  so  much  sympathy  half  humorous,  half  grave 


Sylvia    Scarlett  163 

in  his  demeanor  that  she  could  not  help  being  sorry  for 
her  outburst. 

Nevertheless,  the  fact  of  her  complete  dependence  upon 
Philip  for  everything,  even  before  marriage,  was  always  an 
oppression  to  Sylvia's  mind,  which  was  increased  by  the 
continual  reminders  of  her  loneliness  that  intercourse  with 
other  girls  forced  upon  her.  They,  when  they  should 
marry,  should  be  married  from  a  background;  the  lovers, 
when  they  came  for  them,  would  have  to  fight  for  their 
love  by  breaking  down  the  barriers  of  old  associations,  old 
friendships,  and  old  affections;  in  a  word,  they  would  have 
to  win  the  brides.  What  was  her  own  background? 
Nothing  but  a  panorama  of  streets  which  offered  no  oppo- 
sition to  Philip's  choice  except  in  so  far  as  it  was  an  ugly 
background  for  a  possession  of  his  own  and  therefore  fit  to 
be  destroyed.  It  was  all  very  well  for  Philip  to  tell  her 
that  she  was  herself  and  that  he  loved  her  accordingly. 
If  that  were  true,  why  was  he  taking  so  much  trouble  to 
turn  her  into  something  different?  Other  girls  at  Hornton 
House,  when  they  married,  would  not  begin  with  ugly 
backgrounds  to  be  obliterated;  their  pasts  would  merge 
beautifully  with  the  pasts  of  their  husbands;  they  were 
not  being  transformed  by  Miss  Pinck  and  Miss  Primer; 
they  were  merely  being  supplied  by  them  with  value  for 
their  parents'  money.  It  was  a  visit  to  Phyllis  Markham's 
home  in  Leicestershire  during  the  Easter  holidays  that 
had  branded  with  the  iron  of  jealousy  these  facts  upon  her 
meditation.  Phyllis  used  to  lament  that  she  had  no 
brothers;  and  Sylvia  used  to  wonder  what  she  would  have 
said  if  she  had  been  like  herself,  without  mother,  without 
father,  without  brothers,  without  sisters,  without  relations, 
without  friends,  without  letters,  without  photographs, 
with  nothing  in  the  whole  world  between  herself  and  the 
shifting  panorama  from  which  she  had  been  snatched  but 
the  love  of  a  timid  man  inspired  by  an  unusual  encounter 
in  Brompton  Cemetery.  This  visit  to  Phyllis  Markham 
was  the  doom  upon  their  friendship;  however  sweet, 
however  sympathetic,  however  loyal  Phyllis  might  be, 
she  must  ultimately  despise  her  friend's  past;  every  word 
Sylvia  listened  to  during  those  Easter  holidays  seemed 
to  cry  out  the  certain  fulfilment  of  this  conjecture. 


164  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"I  expect  I'm  too  sensitive,"  Sylvia  said  to  herself.  "I 
expect  I  really  am  common,  because  apparently  common 
people  are  always  looking  out  for  slights.  I  don't  look  out 
for  them  now,  but  if  I  were  to  tell  Phyllis  all  about  myself, 
I'm  sure  I  should  begin  to  look  out  for  them.  No,  I'll  just 
be  friends  with  her  up  to  a  point,  for  so  long  as  I  stay  at 
Hornton  House;  then  we'll  separate  forever.  I'm  really 
an  absolute  fraud.  I'm  just  as  much  of  a  fraud  now  as 
when  I  was  dressed  up  as  a  boy.  I'm  not  real  in  this  life. 
I  haven't  been  real  since  I  came  down  to  breakfast  with 
Miss  Ashley  that  first  morning.  I'm  simply  a  very  good 
impostor.  I  must  inherit  the  talent  from  father.  Another 
reason  against  telling  Phyllis  about  myself  is  that,  if  I  do, 
I  shall  become  her  property.  Miss  Ashley  knows  all  about 
me,  but  I'm  not  her  property,  because  it's  part  of  her 
profession  to  be  told  secrets.  Phyllis  would  love  me  more 
than  ever,  so  long  as  she  was  the  only  person  that  owned 
the  secret,  but  if  anybody  else  ever  knew,  even  if  it  were 
only  Philip,  she  would  be  jealous  and  she  would  have  to 
make  a  secret  of  it  with  some  one  else.  Then  she  would  be 
ashamed  of  herself  and  would  begin  to  hate  and  despise 
me  in  self-defense.  No,  I  must  never  tell  any  of  the  girls." 

Apart  from  these  morbid  fits,  which  were  not  very  fre- 
quent, Sylvia  enjoyed  her  stay  at  Markham  Grange.  In 
a  way  it  encouraged  the  idea  of  marrying  Philip;  for  the 
country  life  appealed  to  her  not  as  to  a  cockney  by  the 
strangeness  of  its  inhabitants  and  the  mere  quantity  of 
grass  in  sight,  but  more  deeply  with  those  old  ineffable 
longings  of  Hampstead. 

At  the  end  of  the  summer  term  the  twins  invited  Sylvia 
to  stay  with  them  in  Hertfordshire.  She  refused  at  first, 
because  she  felt  that  she  could  not  bear  the  idea  of  being 
jealously  disturbed  by  a  second  home.  The  twins  were 
inconsolable  at  her  refusal  and  sent  a  telegram  to  their 
mother,  who  had  already  written  one  charming  letter  of 
invitation,  and  who  now  wrote  another  in  which  she  told 
Sylvia  of  her  children's  bitter  disappointment  and  begged 
her  to  come.  Miss  Ashley,  also,  was  anxious  that  Sylvia 
should  go,  and  told  her  frankly  that  it  seemed  an  excellent 
chance  to  think  over  seriously  her  marriage  with  Philip  in 
the  autumn.  Philip,  now  that  the  date  of  her  final  decision 


Sylvia    Scarlett  165 

was  drawing  near,  wished  her  to  remain  with  Miss  Ashley 
in  London.  His  opposition  was  enough  to  make  Sylvia 
insist  upon  going;  so,  when  at  the  end  of  July  the  school 
was  swept  by  a  tornado  of  relations  and  friends,  Sylvia  was 
swept  away  with  the  twins  to  Hertfordshire,  and  Philip 
was  left  to  wait  till  the  end  of  September  to  know  whether 
she  would  marry  him  or  not  in  October. 

The  Worsleys'  home  at  Arbour  End  made  an  altogether 
different  impression  upon  Sylvia  from  Markham  Grange. 
She  divined  in  some  way  that  the  background  here  was  not 
immemorial,  but  that  the  Worsleys  had  created  it  them- 
selves. And  a  perfect  background  it  was — a  very  com- 
fortable red  brick  house  with  a  garden  full  of  flowers,  an 
orchard  loaded  with  fruit,  fields  promenaded  by  neat  cows, 
pigsties  inhabited  by  clean  pigs,  a  shining  dog-cart  and  a 
shining  horse,  all  put  together  with  the  satisfying  com- 
pleteness of  a  picture-puzzle.  Mr.  Worsley  was  a  hand- 
some man,  tall  and  fair  with  a  boyish  face  and  a  quantity 
of  clothes;  Mrs.  Worsley  was  slim  and  fair,  with  a  rose- 
leaf  complexion  and  as  many  clothes  as  her  husband. 
The  twins  were  even  naughtier  and  more  charming  than 
they  were  at  Hornton  House;  there  was  a  small  brother 
called  Hercules,  aged  six,  who  was  as  charming  as  his 
sisters  and  surpassed  them  in  wickedness.  The  maids 
were  trim  and  tolerant;  the  gardener  was  never  grumpy; 
Hercules's  governess  disapproved  of  holiday  tasks;  the 
dogs  wagged  their  tails  at  the  least  sound. 

"I  love  these  people,"  Sylvia  said  to  herself,  when  she 
was  undressing  on  the  first  night  of  her  stay.  "  I  love  them, 
I  love  them.  I  feel  at  home — at  home — at  home!"  She 
leaped  into  bed  and  hugged  the  pillow  in  a  triumph  of 
good-fellowship. 

At  Arbour  End  Sylvia  banished  the  future  and  gave 
herself  to  the  present.  One  seemed  to  have  nothing  to  do 
but  to  amuse  oneself  then,  and  it  was  so  easy  to  amuse  one- 
self that  one  never  grew  tired  of  doing  so.  As  the  twins 
pointed  out,  their  father  was  so  much  nicer  than  any  other 
father,  because  whatever  was  suggested  he  always  enjoyed. 
If  it  was  a  question  of  learning  golf,  Mr.  Worsley  took  the 
keenest  interest  in  teaching  it.  When  Gladys  drove  a  ball 
through  the  drawing-room  window,  no  one  was  more 


166  Sylvia    Scarlett 

delighted  than  Mr.  Worsley  himself;  he  infected  everybody 
with  his  pleasure,  so  that  the  gardener  beamed  at  the 
notion  of  going  to  fetch  the  glazier  from  the  village,  and 
the  glazier  beamed  when  he  mended  the  window,  and  the 
maids  beamed  while  they  watched  him  at  work,  and  the 
dogs  sat  down  in  a  loose  semicircle,  thumping  the  lawn 
with  appreciative  tails.  The  next  day,  when  Hercules, 
who,  standing  solemnly  apart  from  the  rest,  had  observed 
all  that  happened,  threw  a  large  stone  through  the  mended 
window,  there  was  the  same  scene  of  pleasure  slightly 
intensified. 

Mrs.  Worsley  flitted  through  the  house,  making  every 
room  she  entered  more  beautiful  and  more  gay  for  her 
presence.  She  had  only  one  regret,  which  was  that  the 
twins  were  getting  so  big,  and  this  not  as  with  other 
mothers  because  it  made  her  feel  old,  but  because  she 
would  no  more  see  their  black  legs  and  their  tumbled  hair. 
Sylvia  once  asked  her  how  she  could  bear  to  let  them  go  to 
school,  and  Mrs.  Worsley's  eyes  filled  with  tears. 

"I  had  to  send  them  to  school,"  she  whispered,  sadly. 
"Because  they  would  fall  in  love  with  the  village  boys  and 
they  were  getting  Hertfordshire  accents.  Perhaps  you've 
noticed  that  I  myself  speak  with  a  slight  cockney  accent. 
Do  you  understand,  dear?'* 

The  August  days  fled  past  and  in  the  last  week  came  a 
letter  from  Miss  Ashley. 

MURREN,  August  26,  7pOO. 

MY  DEAR  SYLVIA, — I  shall  be  back  from  Switzerland  by  September  3d, 
and  I  shall  be  delighted  to  see  you  at  Hornton  House  again.  Philip  nearly 
followed  me  here  in  order  to  talk  about  you,  but  I  declined  his  company. 
I  want  you  to  think  very  seriously  about  your  future,  as  no  doubt  you 
have  been  doing  all  this  month.  If  you  have  the  least  hesitation  about 
marrying  Philip,  let  me  advise  you  not  to  do  it.  I  shall  be  glad  to  offer 
you  a  place  at  Hornton  House,  not  as  a  schoolmistress,  but  as  a  kind  of 
director  of  the  girls'  leisure  time.  I  have  grown  very  fond  of  you  during 
this  year  and  have  admired  the  way  in  which  you  settled  down  here 
more  than  I  can  express.  We  will  talk  this  over  more  fully  when  we  meet, 
but  I  want  you  to  know  that,  if  you  feel  you  ought  not  to  marry,  you 
have  a  certain  amount  of  security  for  the  future  while  you  are  deciding 
what  you  will  ultimately  do.  Give  my  love  to  the  twins.  I  shall  be 
glad  to  see  you  again. 

Your  affectionate 

CAROLINE  ASHLEY. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  167 

The  effect  of  Miss  Ashley's  letter  was  the  exact  contrary 
of  what  she  had  probably  intended;  it  made  Sylvia  feel 
that  she  was  not  bound  to  marry  Philip,  and,  from  the 
moment  she  was  not  bound,  that  she  was  willing,  even 
anxious,  to  marry  him.  The  aspects  of  his  character  which 
she  had  criticized  to  herself  vanished  and  left  only  the  first 
impression  of  him,  when  she  was  absolutely  free  and  was 
finding  his  company  such  a  relief  from  the  Exhibition. 
Another  result  of  the  letter  was  that  by  removing  the 
shame  of  dependence  and  by  providing  an  alternative  it 
opened  a  way  to  discussion,  for  which  Sylvia  fixed  upon 
Mrs.  Worsley,  divining  that  she  certainly  would  look  at 
her  case  unprejudiced  by  anything  but  her  own  experience. 

Sylvia  never  pretended  to  herself  that  she  would  be  at 
all  influenced  by  advice.  Listening  to  advice  from  Mrs. 
Worsley  would  be  like  looking  into  a  shop-window  with 
money  in  one's  pocket,  but  with  no  intention  of  entering 
the  shop  to  make  a  purchase;  listening  to  her  advice  before 
Miss  Ashley's  offer  would  have  been  like  looking  at  a  shop- 
window  without  a  penny  in  the  world,  a  luxury  of  fancy  to 
which  Sylvia  had  never  given  way.  So  at  the  first  oppor- 
tunity Sylvia  talked  to  Mrs.  Worsley  about  Philip,  going 
back  for  her  opinion  of  him  and  feeling  toward  him  to 
those  first  days  together,  and  thereby  giving  her  listener  an 
impression  that  she  liked  him  a  very  great  deal,  which  was 
true,  as  Sylvia  assured  herself,  yet  not  without  some  mis- 
givings about  her  presentation  of  the  state  of  affairs. 

"He  sounds  most  fascinating,"  said  Mrs.  Worsley.  "Of 
course  Lennie  was  never  at  all  clever.  I  don't  think  he 
ever  read  a  book  in  his  life.  When  I  met  him  first  I  was 
acting  in  burlesque,  and  I  had  to  make  up  my  mind 
between  him  and  my  profession;  I'm  so  glad  I  chose  him. 
But  at  first  I  was  rather  miserable.  His  parents  were  still 
alive,  and  though  they  were  very  kind  to  me,  I  was  always 
an  intruder,  and  of  course  Lennie  was  dependent  on  them, 
for  he  was  much  too  stupid  an  old  darling  to  earn  his  own 
living.  He  really  has  nothing  but  his  niceness.  Then  his 
parents  died  and,  being  an  only  son,  Lennie  had  all  the 
money.  We  lived  for  a  time  in  his  father's  house,  but  it 
became  impossible.  We  had  my  poor  old  mother  down  to 
stay  with  us,  and  the  neighbors  called,  as  if  she  were  a 


168  Sylvia    Scarlett 

curiosity.  When  she  didn't  appear  at  tea,  you  could  feel 
they  were  staying  on,  hoping  against  hope  to  get  a  glimpse 
of  her.  I  expect  I  was  sensitive  and  rather  silly,  but  I  was 
miserable.  And  then  Lennie,  who  is  not  clever,  but  so 
nice  that  it  always  leads  him  to  do  exactly  the  right  thing, 
went  away  suddenly  and  bought  this  house,  where  life  has 
been  one  long  dream  of  happiness.  You've  seen  how 
utterly  self-contained  we  are.  Nobody  comes  to  visit  us 
very  much,  because  when  we  first  came  here  we  used  to 
hide  when  people  called.  And  then  the  twins  have  always 
been  such  a  joy — oh,  dear,  I  wish  they  would  never  grow 
up;  but  there's  still  Hercules,  and  you  never  know,  there 
might  be  another  baby.  Oh,  my  dear  Sylvia,  Pm  sure  you 
ought  to  get  married.  And  you  say  his  parents  are  dead  ?" 

"But  he  has  a  sister." 

"Oh,  a  sister  doesn't  matter.  And  it  doesn't  matter  his 
being  clever  and  fond  of  books,  because  you're  fond  of 
books  yourself.  The  twins  tell  me  you've  read  everything 
in  the'world  and  that  there's  nothing  you  don't  know.  I'm 
sure  you'd  soon  get  tired  of  Hornton  House — oh,  yes,  I 
strongly  advise  you  to  get  married." 

When  Sylvia  got  back  to  London  the  memory  of  Arbour 
End  rested  in  her  thoughts  like  a  pleasant  dream  of  the 
night  that  one  ponders  in  a  summer  dawn.  She  assured 
Miss  Ashley  that  she  was  longing  to  marry  Philip;  and  when 
she  seemed  to  express  in  her  reception  of  the  announce- 
ment a  kind  of  puzzled  approval,  Sylvia  spoke  with  real 
enthusiasm  of  her  marriage.  Miss  Ashley  never  knew  that 
the  real  inspiration  of  such  enthusiasm  was  Arbour  End 
and  not  at  all  Philip  himself.  As  for  Sylvia,  because  she 
would  by  no  means  admit  even  to  herself  that  she  had 
taken  Mrs.  Worsley's  advice,  she  passed  over  the  advice 
and  remarked  only  the  signs  of  happiness  at  Arbour  End. 

Sylvia  and  Philip  were  married  at  a  registry-office  early 
in  October.  The  honeymoon  was  spent  in  the  Italian 
lakes,  where  Philip  denounced  the  theatrical  scenery,  but 
crowned  Sylvia  with  vine-leaves  and  wrote  Latin  poetry 
to  her,  which  he  translated  aloud  in  the  evenings  as  well 
as  the  mosquitoes  would  let  him. 


CHAPTER  VII 

REEN   LANES   lay  midway   between   the   market 

V J  town  of  Galton   and  the  large  village  of  Newton 

Candover.  It  is  a  small,  tumble-down  hamlet  remote 
from  any  highroad,  the  confluence  of  four  deserted  by- 
ways leading  to  other  hamlets  upon  the  wooded  down- 
land  of  which  Green  Lanes  was  the  highest  point.  Hare 
Hall,  the  family  mansion  of  the  Iredales,  was  quite  two 
miles  away  in  the  direction  of  Newton  Candover  and  was 
let  for  a  long  term  of  years  to  a  rich  stockbroker.  Philip 
himself  lived  at  The  Old  Farm,  an  Elizabethan  farm-house 
which  he  had  filled  with  books.  The  only  other  "gentle- 
man" in  Green  Lanes  was  the  vicar,  Mr.  Dorward,  with 
whom  Philip  had  quarreled.  The  squire  as  lay  rector 
drew  a  yearly  revenue  of  £300,  but  he  refused  to  allow  the 
living  more  than  £90  until  the  vicar  gave  up  his  ritualistic 
fads,  to  which,  though  he  never  went  inside  the  church,  he 
strongly  objected. 

Sylvia's  first  quarrel  with  Philip  was  over  the  vicar, 
whom  she  met  through  her  puppy's  wandering  into  his 
cottage  while  he  was  at  tea  and  refusing  to  come  out.  She 
might  never  have  visited  him  again  if  Philip  had  not 
objected,  for  he  was  very  shy  and  eccentric;  but  after 
two  more  visits  to  annoy  Philip,  she  began  to  like  Mr. 
Dorward,  and  her  friendship  with  him  became  a  standing 
source  of  irritation  to  her  husband  and  a  pleasure  to  herself 
which  she  declined  to  give  up.  Her  second  quarrel  with 
Philip  was  over  his  sister  Gertrude,  who  came  down  for  a 
visit,  soon  after  they  got  back  from  Como.  Gertrude, 
having  until  her  brother's  marriage  always  lived  at  The 
Old  Farm,  could  not  refrain  from  making  Sylvia  very  much 
aware  of  this;  her  conversation  was  one  long,  supercilious 
narrative  of  what  she  used  to  do  at  Green  Lanes,  with 
which  were  mingled  fears  for  what  might  be  done  there  in 


170  Sylvia    Scarlett 

the  future.  Philip  was  quite  ready  to  admit  that  his 
sister  could  be  very  irritating,  but  he  thought  Sylvia's 
demand  for  her  complete  exclusion  from  The  Old  Farm  for 
at  least  a  year  was  unreasonable 

"Well,  if  she  comes,  I  shall  go,'*  Sylvia  said,  sullenly. 

"My  dear  child,  do  remember  that  you're  married 
and  that  you  can't  go  and  come  as  you  like,"  Philip 
answered.  "However,  I  quite  see  your  point  of  view 
about  poor  Gertrude  and  I  quite  agree  with  you  that 
for  a  time  it  will  be  wiser  to  keep  ourselves  rather  strictly 
to  ourselves." 

Why  could  he  not  have  said  that  at  first,  Sylvia  thought. 
She  would  have  been  so  quickly  generous  if  he  had,  but 
the  preface  about  her  being  married  had  spoiled  his  con- 
cession. He  was  a  curious  creature,  this  husband  of  hers. 
When  they  were  alone  he  would  encourage  her  to  be  as  she 
used  to  be;  he  would  laugh  with  her,  show  the  keenest 
interest  in  what  she  was  reading,  search  for  a  morning  to 
find  some  book  that  would  please  her,  listen  with  delight 
to  her  stories  of  Jimmy  Monkley  or  of  her  father  or  of 
Blanche,  and  be  always,  in  fact,  the  sympathetic  friend, 
never  obtruding  himself,  as  lover  or  monitor,  two  aspects 
of  him  equally  repugnant  to  Sylvia.  Yet  when  there  was 
the  least  likelihood  not  alone  of  a  third  person's  presence, 
but  even  of  a  third  person's  hearing  any  roundabout  gossip 
of  her  real  self,  Philip  would  shrivel  her  up  with  intermi- 
nable corrections,  and  what  was  far  worse,  try  to  sweeten 
the  process  by  what  she  considered  fatuous  demonstra- 
tions of  affection.  For  a  time  there  was  no  great  tension 
between  them,  because  Sylvia's  adventurous  spirit  was 
occupied  by  her  passion  for  knowledge;  she  felt  vaguely 
that  at  any  time  the  moment  might  arrive  when  mere 
knowledge  without  experience  would  not  be  enough;  at 
present  the  freedom  of  Philip's  library  was  adventure 
enough.  He  was  most  eager  to  assist  her  progress,  and 
almost  reckless  in  the  way  he  spurred  her  into  every  liberty 
of  thought,  maintaining  the  stupidity  of  all  conventional 
beliefs — moral,  religious,  or  political.  He  warned  her 
that  the  expression  of  such  opinions,  or,  still  worse,  action 
under  the  influence  of  them,  would  be  for  her  or  for  any 
one  else  in  the  present  state  of  society  quite  impossible; 


Sylvia    Scarlett  171 

Sylvia  used  to  think  at  the  time  that  it  was  only  herself  as 
his  wife  whom  he  wished  to  keep  in  check,  and  resented  his 
reasons  accordingly;  afterward  looking  back  to  this  period 
she  came  to  the  conclusion  that  Philip  was  literally  a 
theorist,  and  that  his  fierce  denunciations  of  all  conven- 
tional opinions  could  never  in  any  circumstances  have 
gone  further  than  quarreling  with  the  vicar  and  getting 
married  in  a  registry-office.  Once  when  she  attacked  him 
for  his  cowardice  he  retorted  by  citing  his  marriage  with 
her,  and  immediately  afterward  apologized  for  what  he 
characterized  as  "caddishness." 

"If  you  had  married  me  and  oeen  content  to  let  me 
remain  myself,"  Sylvia  said,  "you  might  have  used  that 
argument.  But  you  showed  you  were  frightened  of  what 
you'd  done  when  you  sent  me  to  Hornton  House." 

"My  dear  child,  I  wanted  you  to  go  there  for  your  own 
comfort,  not  for  mine.  After  all,  it  was  only  like  reading  a 
book;  it  gave  you  a  certain  amount  of  academic  theory 
that  you  could  prove  or  disprove  by  experience." 

"A  devil  of  a  lot  of  experience  I  get  here,"  Sylvia  ex- 
claimed. 

"You're  still  only  seventeen,"  Philip  answered.  "The 
time  will  come." 

"It  will  come,"  Sylvia  murmured,  darkly. 

"You're  not  threatening  to  run  away  from  me  already?" 
Philip  asked,  with  a  smile. 

"I  might  do  anything,"  she  owned.  "I  might  poison 
you." 

Philip  laughed  heartily  at  this;  just  then  Mr.  Dorward 
passed  over  the  village  green,  which  gave  him  an  op  or- 
tunity  to  rail  at  his  cassock. 

"It's  ridiculous  for  a  man  to  go  about  dressed  up  like 
that.  Of  course,  nobody  attends  his  church.  I  can't  think 
why  my  father  gave  him  the  living.  He's  a  ritualist,  and 
his  manners  are  abominable." 

"But  he  looks  like  a  Roman  Emperor,"  said  Sylvia. 

Philip  spluttered  with  indignation.  "Oh,  he's  Roman 
enough,  my  dear  child;  but  an  Emperor!  Which 
Emperor?" 

"I'm  not  sure  which  it  is,  but  I  think  it's  Nero." 

"Yes,  I  see  what  you  mean,"  Philip  assented,  after  a 


172  Sylvia    Scarlett 

pause.  "You're  amazingly  observant.  Yes,  there  is  that 
kind  of  mixture  of  sensual  strength  and  fineness  about  his 
face.  But  it's  not  surprising.  The  line  between  degener- 
acy and  the  'twopence  colored'  type  of  religion  is  not 
very  clearly  drawn." 

It  was  after  this  conversation  that,  in  searching  for  a 
picture  of  Nero's  head  to  compare  with  Mr.  Dorward's, 
Sylvia  came  across  the  Satyricon  of  Petronius  in  a  French 
translation.  She  read  it  through  without  skipping  a  word, 
applied  it  to  the  test  of  recognition,  and  decided  that  she 
found  more  satisfactorily  than  in  any  book  she  had  yet 
read  a  distorting  mirror  of  her  life  from  the  time  she  left 
France  until  she  met  Philip,  a  mirror,  however,  that  never 
distorted  so  wildly  as  to  preclude  recognition.  Having 
made  this  discovery,  she  announced  it  to  him,  who 
applauded  her  sense  of  humor  and  of  literature,  but  begged 
her  to  keep  it  to  herself;  people  might  get  a  wrong  idea  of 
her;  he  knew  what  she  meant  and  appreciated  the 
reflection,  but  it  was  a  book  that,  generally  speaking,  no 
woman  would  read,  still  less  talk  about,  and  least  of  all 
claim  kinship  with.  It  was  of  course  an  immortal  work  of 
art,  humorous,  witty,  fantastic. 

"And  true,"  Sylvia  added. 

"And  no  doubt  true  to  its  period  and  its  place,  which 
was  southern  Italy  in  the  time  of  Nero." 

"And  true  to  southern  England  in  the  time  of  Victoria," 
Sylvia  insisted.  "I  don't  mean  that  it's  exactly  the 
same,"  she  went  on,  striving  almost  painfully  to  express 
her  thoughts.  "The  same,  though.  I  feel  it's  true.  I 
don't  know  it's  true.  Oh,  can't  you  understand?" 

"I  fancy  you're  trying  to  voice  your  esthetic  conscious- 
ness of  great  art  that,  however  time  may  change  its 
accessories,  remains  inherently  changeless.  Realism  in 
fact  as  opposed  to  what  is  wrongly  called  realism.  Lots 
of  critics,  Sylvia,  have  tried  to  define  what  is  worrying 
you,  and  lots  of  long  words  have  been  enlisted  on  their 
behalf.  A  better  and  more  ancient  word  for  realism  was 
'poetry';  but  the  word  has  been  debased  by  the  versifiers 
who  call  themselves  poets  just  as  painters  call  themselves 
artists — both  are  titles  that  only  posterity  can  award. 
Great  art  is  something  that  is  made  and  that  lives  in  itself; 


Sylvia    Scarlett  173 

like  that  stuff,  radium,  which  was  discovered  the  year 
before  last,  it  eternally  gives  out  energy  without  consum- 
ing itself.  Radium,  however,  does  not  solve  the  riddle  of 
life,  and  until  we  solve  that,  great  art  will  remain  unde- 
finable.  Which  reminds  me  of  a  mistake  that  so-called 
believers  make.  I've  often  heard  Christians  maintain  the 
truth  of  Christianity,  because  it  is  still  alive.  What 
nonsense!  The  words  of  Christ  are  still  alive,  because 
Christ  Himself  was  a  great  poet,  and  therefore  expressed 
humanity  as  perhaps  no  one  else  ever  expressed  humanity 
before.  But  the  lying  romantic,  the  bad  poet,  in  fact,  who 
tickles  the  vain  and  credulous  mob  with  miracles  and 
theogonies,  expresses  nothing.  It  is  a  proof  of  nothing 
but  the  vitality  of  great  art  that  the  words  of  Christ  can 
exist  and  can  continue  to  affect  humanity  notwithstanding 
the  mountebank  behavior  attributed  to  Him,  out  of  which 
priests  have  manufactured  a  religion.  It  is  equally  sur- 
prising that  Cervantes  could  hold  his  own  against  the 
romances  of  chivalry  he  tried  to  kill.  He  may  have  killed 
one  mode  of  expression,  but  he  did  not  prevent  East  Lynne 
from  being  written;  he  yet  endures  because  Don  Quixote, 
whom  he  made,  has  life.  By  the  way,  you  never  got  on 
with  Don  Quixote,  did  you?" 

Sylvia  shook  her  head. 

"I  think  it's  a  failure  on  your  part,  dear  Sylvia." 

"He  is  so  stupid,"  she  said. 

"But  he  realized  how  stupid  he  was  before  he  died." 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders.  "  I  can't  help  my  bad  taste, 
as  you  call  it.  He  annoys  me." 

"You  think  the  Yanguseian  carriers  dealt  with  him  in 
the  proper  way?" 

"I  don't  remember  them." 

"They  beat  him." 

"I  think  I  could  beat  a  person  who  annoyed  me  very 
much,"  Sylvia  said.  "I  don't  mean  with  sticks,  of  course, 
but  with  my  behavior." 

"Is  that  another  warning?"  Philip  asked. 

"Perhaps." 

"Anyway,  you  think  Petronius  is  good?" 

She  nodded  her  head  emphatically. 

"Come,  you  shall  give  a  judgment  on  Aristophanes. 


174  Sylvia    Scarlett 

I  commend  him  to  you  in  the  same  series  of  French  trans- 
lations." 

"I  think  Lysistrata  is  simply  splendid,"  Sylvia  said,  a 
week  or  so  later.  "And  I  like  the  Thesmos-something  and 
the  Eck-something." 

"I  thought  you  might,"  Philip  laughed.  "But  don't 
quote  from  them  when  my  millionaire  tenant  comes  to 
tea." 

"Don't  be  always  harping  upon  the  dangers  of  my  con- 
versation," she  exhorted. 

"Mayn't  I  even  tease  you?"  Philip  asked,  in  mock 
humility. 

"I  don't  mind  being  teased,  but  it  isn't  teasing.  It's 
serious." 

"Your  sense  of  humor  plays  you  tricks  sometimes,"  he 
said. 

"Oh,  don't  talk  about  my  sense  of  humor  like  that.  My 
sense  of  humor  isn't  a  watch  that  you  can  take  out  and 
tap  and  regulate  and  wind  up  and  shake  your  head  over. 
I  hate  people  who  talk  about  a  sense  of  humor  as  you  do. 
Are  you  so  sure  you  have  one  yourself?" 

"Perhaps  I  haven't,"  Philip  agreed,  but  by  the  way  in 
which  he  spoke  Sylvia  knew  that  he  would  maintain  he  had 
a  sense  of  humor,  and  that  the  rest  of  humanity  had  none 
if  it  combined  to  contradict  him.  "I  always  distrust 
people  who  are  too  confidently  the  possessors  of  one,"  he 
added. 

"You  don't  understand  in  the  least  what  I  mean," 
Sylvia  cried  out,  in  exasperation.  "You  couldn't  distrust 
anybody  else's  sense  of  humor  if  you  had  one  yourself." 

"That's  what  I  said,"  Philip  pointed  out,  in  an  ag- 
grieved voice. 

"Don't  go  on;  you'll  make  me  scream,"  she  adjured 
him.  "I  won't  talk  about  a  sense  of  humor,  because  if 
there  is  such  a  thing  it  obviously  can't  be  talked  about." 

Lest  Philip  should  pursue  the  argument,  she  left  him 
and  went  for  a  long  muddy  walk  by  herself  half-way  to 
Galton.  She  had  never  before  walked  beyond  the  village 
of  Medworth,  but  she  was  still  in  such  a  state  of  nervous 
exasperation  that  she  continued  down  the  hill  beyond  it 
without  noticing  how  far  it  was  taking  her.  The  country 


Sylvia    Scarlett  175 

on  either  side  of  the  road  ascended  in  uncultivated  fields 
toward  dense  oak  woods.  In  many  of  these  fields  were 
habitations  with  grandiose  names,  mostly  built  of  corru- 
gated iron.  Sylvia  thought  at  first  that  she  was  approach- 
ing the  outskirts  of  Galton  and  pressed  on  to  explore  the 
town,  the  name  of  which  was  familiar  from  the  rickety 
tradesmen's  carts  that  jogged  through  Green  Lanes.  There 
was  no  sign  of  a  town,  however,  and  after  walking  about 
two  miles  through  a  landscape  that  recalled  the  pictures 
she  had  seen  of  primitive  settlements  in  the  Far  West,  she 
began  to  feel  tired  and  turned  round  upon  her  tracks,  wish- 
ing she  had  not  come  quite  so  far.  Suddenly  a  rustic  gate 
that  was  almost  buried  in  the  undipped  hazel  hedge  on 
one  side  of  the  road  was  flung  open,  and  an  elderly  lady 
with  a  hooked  nose  and  fierce  bright  eyes,  dressed  in  what 
looked  at  a  first  glance  like  a  pair  of  soiled  lace  window- 
curtains,  asked  Sylvia  with  some  abruptness  if  she  had  met 
a  turkey  going  in  her  direction.  Sylvia  shook  her  head, 
and  the  elderly  lady  (Sylvia  would  have  called  her  an  old 
lady  from  her  wrinkled  countenance,  had  she  not  been  so 
astonishingly  vivacious  in  her  movements)  called  in  a  high 
harsh  voice: 

"Emmie!  There's  a  girl  here  coming  from  Galton  way, 
and  she  hasn't  seen  Major  Kettlewell." 

In  the  distance  a  female  voice  answered,  shrilly, 
"  Perhaps  he's  crossed  over  to  the  Pluepotts'!" 

Sylvia  explained  that  she  had  misunderstood  the  first 
inquiry,  but  that  nobody  had  passed  her  since  she  turned 
back  five  minutes  ago. 

"We  call  the  turkey  Major  Kettlewell  because  he  looks 
like  Major  Kettlewell,  but  Major  Kettlewell  himself  lives 
over  there." 

The  elderly  lady  indicated  the  other  side  of  the  road  with 
a  vague  gesture,  and  went  on: 

"Where  can  that  dratted  bird  have  got  to?  Major! 
Major!  Major!  Chuch — chick — chilly — chilly — chuck — 
chuck,"  she  called. 

Sylvia  hoped  that  the  real  major  lived  far  enough  away 
to  be  out  of  hearing. 

"Never  keep  a  turkey,"  the  elderly  lady  went  on, 
addressing  Sylvia.  "We  didn't  kill  it  for  Christmas, 
12 


176  Sylvia    Scarlett 

because  we'd  grown  fond  of  it,  even  though  he  is  like  that 
old  ruffian  of  a  major.  And  ever  since  he's  gone  on  the 
wander.  It's  the  springtime  coming,  I  suppose." 

The  elderly  lady's  companion  had  by  this  time  reached 
the  gate,  and  Sylvia  saw  that  she  was  considerably 
younger,  but  with  the  same  hall-mark  of  old-maidishness. 

"Don't  worry  any  more  about  the  bird,  Adelaide,"  said 
the  new-comer.  "It's  tea-time.  Depend  upon  it,  he's 
crossed  over  to  the  Pluepotts'.  This  time  I  really  will 
wring  his  neck." 

Sylvia  prepared  to  move  along,  but  the  first  lady  asked 
her  where  she  was  going,  and,  when  she  heard  Green  Lanes, 
exclaimed : 

"Gemini!  That's  beyond  Medworth,  isn't  it?  You'd 
better  come  in  and  have  a  cup  of  tea  with  us.  I'm  Miss 
Home,  and  my  friend  here  is  Miss  Hobart." 

Sunny  Bank,  as  this  particular  tin  house  was  named, 
not  altogether  inappropriately,  although  it  happened  to  be 
on  the  less  sunny  side  of  the  road,  was  built  half-way  up  a 
steepish  slope  of  very  rough  ground  from  which  enough 
flints  had  been  extracted  to  pave  a  zigzag  of  ascending 
paths,  and  to  vary  the  contour  of  the  slope  with  a  minia- 
ture mountain  range  of  unused  material  without  appar- 
ently smoothing  the  areas  of  proposed  cultivation. 

"These  paths  are  something  dreadful,  Emmie,"  said 
Miss  Home,  as  the  three  of  them  scrambled  up  through  the 
garden.  *' Never  mind,  we'll  get  the  roller  out  of  the 
hedge  when  Mr.  Pluepott  comes  in  on  Wednesday.  Miss 
Hobart  nearly  got  carried  away  by  the  roller  yesterday," 
she  explained  to  Sylvia. 

A  trellised  porch  outside  the  bungalow — such  appar- 
ently was  the  correct  name  for  these  habitations — afforded 
a  view  of  the  opposite  slope,  which  was  sprinkled  with 
bungalows  surrounded  like  Sunny  Bank  by  heaps  of 
stones;  there  were  also  one  or  two  more  pretentious  build- 
ings of  red  brick  and  one  or  two  stony  gardens  without  a 
dwelling-place  as  yet. 

"I  suppose  you're  wondering  why  the  name  over  the 
door  isn't  the  same  as  the  one  on  the  gate?  Mr.  Pluepott 
is  always  going  to  take  it  out,  but  he  never  remembers  to 
bring  the  paint.  It's  the  name  the  man  from  whom  we 


Sylvia    Scarlett  177 

bought  it  gave  the  bungalow,"  said  Miss  Hobart,  crossly. 
Sylvia  read  in  gothic  characters  over  the  door  Floral  Nook, 
and  agreed  with  the  two  ladies  that  Sunny  Bank  was  much 
more  suitable. 

"For  whatever  else  it  may  be,  it  certainly  isn't  damp," 
Miss  Home  declared.  "But,  dear  me,  talking  of  names, 
you  haven't  told  us  yours." 

Sylvia  felt  shy.  It  was  actually  the  first  time  she  had 
been  called  upon  to  announce  herself  since  she  was 
married.  The  two  ladies  exclaimed  on  hearing  she  was 
Mrs.  Iredale,  and  Sylvia  felt  that  there  was  a  kind  of 
impropriety  in  her  being  married,  when  Miss  Home  and 
Miss  Hobart,  who  were  so  very  much  older  than  she,  were 
still  spinsters. 

The  four  small  rooms  of  which  the  bungalow  consisted 
were  lined  with  varnished  match-boarding;  everything  was 
tied  up  with  brightly  colored  bows  of  silk,  and  most  of  the 
pictures  were  draped  with  small  curtains;  the  bungalow 
was  full  of  knickknacks  and  shivery  furniture,  but  not  full 
enough  to  satisfy  the  owners'  passion  for  prettiness,  so  that 
wherever  there  was  a  little  space  on  the  walls  silk  bows  had 
been  nailed  about  like  political  favors.  Sylvia  thought  it 
would  have  been  simpler  to  tie  a  wide  sash  of  pink  silk 
round  the  house  and  call  it  The  Chocolate  Box.  Tea, 
though  even  the  spoons  were  tied  up  with  silk,  was  a  varied 
and  satisfying  meal.  The  conversation  of  the  two  ladies 
was  remarkably  entertaining  when  it  touched  upon  their 
neighbors,  and  when  twilight  warned  Sylvia  that  she  must 
hurry  away  she  was  sorry  to  leave  them.  While  she  was 
making  her  farewells  there  was  a  loud  tap  at  the  door, 
followed  immediately  by  the  entrance  of  a  small  bullet- 
headed  man  with  quick  black  eyes. 

"I've  brought  back  your  turkey,  Miss  Home." 

"Oh,  thank  you,  Mr.  Pluepott.  There  you  are,  Emmie. 
You  were  right." 

At  this  moment  the  bird  began  to  flap  its  wings  as 
violently  as  its  position  head  downward  would  allow;  nor, 
not  being  a  horse,  did  it  pay  any  attention  to  Mr.  Plue- 
pott's  repeated  shouts  of  "Woa!  Woa  back,  will  you!" 

"I  think  you'd  better  let  him  flap  outside,  Mr.  Plue- 
pott," Miss  Hobart  advised. 


178  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Sylvia  thought  so  too  when  she  looked  at  the  floor. 

"Shall  I  wring  its  neck  now  or  would  you  rather  I  waited 
till  I  come  in  on  Wednesday?" 

"Oh,  I  think  we'll  wait,  thank  you,  Mr.  Pluepott,"  Miss 
Home  said.  "Perhaps  you  wouldn't  mind  shutting  him 
up  in  the  coop.  He  does  wander  so.  Are  you  going  into 
Galton?" 

Mr.  Pluepott  replied,  as  he  confined  Major  Kettlewell 
to  his  barracks,  that,  on  the  contrary,  he  was  driving  up  to 
Medworth  to  see  about  some  beehives  for  sale  there, 
whereupon  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  asked  if  he  would 
mind  taking  Mrs.  Iredale  that  far  upon  her  way. 

A  few  minutes  later  Sylvia,  on  a  very  splintery  seat,  was 
jolting  along  beside  Mr.  Pluepott  toward  Medworth. 

"Rum  lot  of  people  hereabouts,"  he  said,  by  way  of 
opening  the  conversation.  "Some  of  the  rummest  people 
it's  ever  been  my  luck  to  meet.  I  came  here  because  my 
wife  had  to  leave  the  Midlands.  Chest  was  bad.  I  used  to 
be  a  cobbler  at  Bedford.  Since  I've  been  here  I've  become 
everything— carpenter,  painter,  decorator,  gardener, 
mason,  bee  expert,  poultry-keeper,  blacksmith,  livery- 
stables,  furniture-remover,  house  agent,  common  carrier, 
bricklayer,  dairyman,  horse-breaker.  The  only  thing  I 
don't  do  now  is  make  boots.  Funny  thing,  and  you  won't 
believe  it,  but  last  week  I  had  to  buy  myself  the  first  pair 
of  boots  I  ever  bought  since  I  was  a  lad  of  fifteen.  Oh, 
well,  I  like  the  latest  better  than  the  last,  as  I  jokingly  told 
my  missus  the  other  night.  It  made  her  laugh,"  said  Mr. 
Pluepott,  looking  at  Sylvia  rather  anxiously;  she  managed 
to  laugh  too,  and  he  seemed  relieved. 

"I  often  make  jokes  for  my  missus.  She's  apt  to  get 
very  melancholy  with  her  chest.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  the 
folk  round  here  they  beat  the  band.  It  just  shows  what 
advertisement  will  do." 

Sylvia  asked  why. 

"Well,  when  I  first  came  here,  and  I  was  one  of  the  three 
first,  I  came  because  I  read  an  advertisement  in  the  paper: 
'Land  for  the  Million  in  lots  from  a  quarter  of  an  acre.' 
Some  fellow  had  bought  an  old  farm  that  was  no  use  to 
nobody  and  had  the  idea  of  splitting  it  up  into  lots. 
Originally  this  was  the  Oak  Farm  Estate  and  belonged  to 


Sylvia    Scarlett  179 

St.  Mary's  College,  Oxford.  Now  we  call  it  Oaktown — the 
residents,  that  is — but  when  we  applied  the  other  day  to 
the  Galton  Rural  District  Council,  so  as  we  could  have  the 
name  properly  recognized,  went  in  we  did  with  the  major, 
half  a  dozen  of  us,  as  smart  as  a  funeral,  one  of  the  wise 
men  of  Gotham,  which  is  what  I  jokingly  calls  Galton 
nowadays,  said  he  thought  Tintown  would  be  a  better 
name.  The  major  got  rare  and  angry,  but  his  teeth  slipped 
just  as  he  was  giving  it  'em  hot  and  strong,  which  is  a  trick 
they  have.  He  nearly  swallowed  'em  last  November,  when 
he  was  taking  the  chair  at  a  Conservative  meeting,  in  an 
argument  with  a  Radical  about  the  war.  They  had  to  lead 
him  outside  and  pat  his  back.  It's  a  pity  the  old  ladies  can't 
get  on  with  him.  They  fell  out  over  blackberrying  in  his 
copse  last  Michaelmas.  Well,  the  fact  is  the  major's  a  bit 
close,  and  I  think  he  meant  to  sell  the  blackberries.  He's 
put  up  a  notice  now  'Beware  of  Dangerous  Explosives,' 
though  there's  nothing  more  dangerous  than  a  broken 
air-gun  in  the  whole  house.  Miss  Home  was  very  bitter 
about  it;  oh,  very  bitter  she  was.  Said  she  always  knew 
the  major  was  a  guy,  and  he  only  wanted  to  stuff  himself 
with  gunpowder  to  give  the  boys  a  rare  set  out  on  the 
Fifth." 

"How  did  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  come  here?" 
Sylvia  asked. 

"Advertisement.  They  lived  somewhere  near  London, 
I  believe;  came  into  a  bit  of  money,  I've  heard,  and 
thought  they'd  settle  in  the  country.  I  give  them  a  morn- 
ing a  week  on  Wednesdays.  The  man  they  bought  it  off 
had  been  a  tax-collector  somewhere  in  the  West  Indies. 
He  swindled  them  properly,  but  they  were  sorry  for  him 
because  he  had  a  floating  kidney — floating  in  alcohol,  I 
should  think,  by  the  amount  he  drank.  But  they  won't 
hear  a  word  against  him  even  now.  He's  living  in  Galton 
and  they  send  him  cabbages  every  week,  which  he  gives  to 
his  rabbits  when  he's  sober  and  throws  at  his  housekeeper 
when  he's  drunk.  Sunny  Bank!  I'm  glad  it's  not  my 
Bank.  As  I  jokingly  said  to  my  missus,  I  should  soon  be 
stony-broke.  Ah,  well,  there's  all  sorts  here  and  that's  a 
fact,"  Mr.  Pluepott  continued,  with  a  pensive  flick  at  his 
pony.  "That  man  over  there,  for  instance."  He  pointed 


i8o  Sylvia    Scarlett 

with  his  whip  through  the  gathering  darkness  to  a  particu- 
larly small  tin  cottage.  "  He  used  to  play  the  trombone  in 
a  theater  till  he  played  his  inside  out;  now  he  thinks  he's 
going  to  make  a  fortune  growing  early  tomatoes  for  Covent 
Garden  market.  You  get  him  with  a  pencil  in  his  hand  of 
an  evening  and  you'd  think  about  borrowing  money  from 
him  next  year;  but  when  you  see  him  next  morning  trying 
to  cover  a  five-by-four  packing-case  with  a  broken  sash- 
light,  you'd  be  more  afraid  of  his  trying  to  borrow  from 
you." 

With  such  conversation  did  Mr.  Pluepott  beguile  the 
way  to  Med worth;  and  when  he  heard  that  Sylvia  in- 
tended to  walk  in  the  dusk  to  Green  Lanes  he  insisted  on 
driving  her  the  extra  two  miles. 

"The  hives  won't  fly  away,"  he  said,  cheerfully,  "and  I 
like  to  make  a  good  job  of  a  thing.  Well,  now  you've 
found  your  way  to  Oaktown,  I  hope  you'll  visit  us  again. 
Mrs.  Pluepott  will  be  very  glad  to  see  you  drop  in  for  a  cup 
of  tea  any  day,  and  if  you've  got  any  comical  reading- 
matter,  she'd  be  glad  to  borrow  from  you;  for  her  chest 
does  make  her  very  melancholy,  and,  being  accustomed  to 
having  me  always  about  the  house  when  I  was  cobbling, 
she  doesn't  seem  to  get  used  to  being  alone.  Only  the 
other  day  she  said  if  she'd  known  I  was  going  to  turn  into 
a  Buffalo  Bill  she'd  rather  have  stayed  in  Bedford.  'Land 
for  the  Millions!'  she  said,  'I  reckon  you'd  call  it  Land  for 
the  Million,  if  you  had  to  sweep  the  house  clean  of  the 
mud  you  bring  into  it.'  Well,  good  night  to  you.  Very 
glad  I  was  able  to  oblige,  I'm  sure." 

Philip  was  relieved  when  Sylvia  got  back.  She  had 
never  been  out  for  so  long  before,  and  she  teased  him 
about  the  running  away,  that  he  had  evidently  imagined. 
She  felt  in  a  good  humor  after  her  expedition,  and  was 
glad  to  be  back  in  this  dignified  and  ancient  house  with  its 
books  and  lamplight  and  not  a  silken  bow  anywhere  to  be 
seen. 

"So  you've  been  down  to  that  abomination  of  tin 
houses?  It's  an  absolute  blot  on  the  countryside.  I  don't 
recommend  too  close  an  acquaintanceship.  I'm  told  it's 
inhabited  by  an  appalling  set  of  rascals.  Poor  Melville, 
who  owns  the  land  all  'round,  says  he  can't  keep  a  hare." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  181 

Sylvia  said  the  people  seemed  rather  amusing,  and  was 
not  at  all  inclined  to  accept  Philip's  condemnation  of 
them;  he  surely  did  not  suggest  that  Miss  Home  and  Miss 
Hobart,  for  instance,  were  poachers? 

"My  dear  child,  people  who  come  and  live  in  a  place  like 
the  Oak  Farm  Estate — Oaktown,  as  they  have  the 
impudence  to  call  it — are  there  for  no  good.  They've 
either  done  something  discreditable  in  town  or  they  hope 
to  do  something  discreditable  in  the  country.  Oh  yes, 
I've  heard  all  about  our  neighbors.  There's  a  ridiculous 
fellow  who  calls  himself  a  major — I  believe  he  used  to  be 
in  the  volunteers — and  can't  understand  why  he's  not 
made  a  magistrate.  I'm  told  he's  the  little  tin  god  of 
Tintown.  No,  no,  I  prefer  even  your  friendship  with  our 
vicar.  Don't  be  cross  with  me,  Sylvia,  for  laughing  at 
your  new  friends,  but  you  mustn't  take  them  too  seriously. 
I  shall  have  finished  the  text  I'm  writing  this  month,  and 
we'll  go  up  to  London  for  a  bit.  Shall  we?  I'm  afraid 
you're  getting  dull  down  here." 

The  spring  wore  away,  but  the  text  showed  no  signs  of 
being  finished.  Sylvia  suggested  that  she  should  invite 
Gladys  and  Enid  Worsley  to  stay  with  her,  but  Philip 
begged  her  to  postpone  the  invitation  while  he  was  work- 
ing, and  thought  in  any  case  it  would  be  better  to  have 
them  down  in  summer.  Sylvia  went  to  Oaktown  once  or 
twice,  but  said  nothing  about  it  to  Philip,  because  from  a 
sort  of  charitableness  she  did  not  want  him  to  diminish 
himself  further  in  her  eyes  by  airing  his  prejudices  with 
the  complacency  that  seemed  to  increase  all  the  time  they 
stayed  in  the  country. 

One  day  at  the  end  of  April  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart 
announced  they  had  bought  a  governess-car  and  a  pony, 
built  a  stable,  and  intended  to  celebrate  their  first  drive  by 
calling  on  Sylvia  at  Green  Lanes.  Mr.  Pluepott  had  prom- 
ised, even  if  it  should  not  be  on  a  Wednesday,  to  super- 
intend the  first  expedition  and  gave  his  opinion  of  the  boy 
whom  it  was  proposed  to  employ  as  coachman.  The  boy 
in  question,  whom  Mr.  Pluepott  called  Jehuselah,  whether 
from  an  attempt  to  combine  a  satirical  expression  of  his 
driving  and  his  age,  or  too  slight  acquaintance  with 
Biblical  personalities,  was  uncertain,  was  known  as  Ernie 


182  Sylvia    Scarlett 

to  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  when  he  was  quick  and 
good,  but  as  Ernest  when  he  was  slow  and  bad;  his  real 
name  all  the  time  was  Herbert. 

"Good  heavens!"  Philip  ejaculated,  when  he  beheld  the 
governess-car  from  his  window.  "Who  on  earth  is  this?" 

"Friends  of  mine,"  said  Sylvia.  "Miss  Home  and  Miss 
Hobart.  I  told  you  about  them." 

"But  they're  getting  out,"  Philip  gasped,  in  horror. 
"They're  coming  here." 

"I  know,"  Sylvia  said.  "I  hope  there's  plenty  for  tea. 
They  always  give  me  the  most  enormous  teas."  And 
without  waiting  for  any  more  of  Philip's  protests  she  hur- 
ried down-stairs  and  out  into  the  road  to  welcome  the  two 
ladies.  They  were  both  of  them  dressed  in  pigeon's-throat 
silk  under  more  lace  even  than  usual,  and  arrived  in  a  state 
of  enthusiasm  over  Ernie's  driving  and  thankfulness  for 
the  company  of  Mr.  Pluepott,  who  was  also  extremely 
pleased  with  the  whole  turn-out. 

"A  baby  in  arms  couldn't  have  handled  that  pony  more 
carefully,"  he  declared,  looking  at  Ernie  with  as  much 
pride  as  if  he  had  begotten  him. 

"We're  so  looking  forward  to  meeting  Mr.  Iredale," 
said  Miss  Home. 

"We  hear  he's  a  great  scholar,"  said  Miss  Hobart. 

Sylvia  took  them  into  the  dining-room,  where  she  was 
glad  to  see  that  a  gigantic  tea  had  been  prepared — a  match 
even  for  the  most  profuse  of  Sunny  Bank's. 

Then  she  went  up-stairs  to  fetch  Philip,  who  flatly 
refused  to  come  down. 

"You  must  come,"  Sylvia  urged.  "I'll  never  forgive 
you  if  you  don't." 

"My  dearest  Sylvia,  I  really  cannot  entertain  the  eccen- 
tricities of  Tintown  here.  You  invited  them.  You  must 
look  after  them.  I'm  busy." 

"Are  you  coming?"  Sylvia  asked,  biting  her  lips. 

"No,  I  really  can't.  It's  absurd.  I  don't  want  this  kind 
of  people  here.  Besides,  I  must  work." 

"You  sha'n't  work,"  Sylvia  cried,  in  a  fury,  and  she 
swept  all  his  books  and  papers  on  the  floor. 

"I  certainly  sha'n't  come  now,"  he  said,  in  the  prim 
voice  that  was  so  maddening. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  183 

"Did  you  mean  to  come  before  I  upset  your  books?" 

"Yes,  I  probably  should  have  come,"  he  answered. 

"All  right.  I'm  so  sorry.  I'll  pick  everything  up,"  and 
she  plunged  down  on  the  floor.  "There  you  are,"  she  said 
when  everything  was  put  back  in  its  place.  "Now  will 
you  come?" 

"No,  my  dear.  I  told  you  I  wouldn't  after  you  upset 
my  things." 

"Philip,"  she  cried,  her  eyes  bright  with  rage,  "you're 
making  me  begin  to  hate  you  sometimes." 

Then  she  left  him  and  went  back  to  her  guests,  to  whom 
she  explained  that  her  husband  had  a  headache  and  was 
lying  down.  The  ladies  were  disappointed,  but  consoled 
themselves  by  recommending  a  number  of  remedies  which 
Miss  Home  insisted  that  Sylvia  should  write  down.  When 
tea  was  finished,  Miss  Hobart  said  that  their  first  visit  to 
Green  Lanes  had  been  most  enjoyable  and  that  there  was 
only  one  thing  they  would  like  to  do  before  going  home, 
which  would  be  to  visit  the  church.  Sylvia  jumped  at  an 
excuse  for  not  showing  them  over  the  house,  and  they  set 
out  immediately  through  the  garden  to  walk  to  the  little 
church  that  stood  in  a  graveyard  grass-grown  like  the 
green  lanes  of  the  hamlet  whose  dead  were  buried  there. 
The  sun  was  westering,  and  in  the  golden  air  they  lowered 
their  voices  for  a  thrush  that  was  singing  his  vespers  upon 
a  moldering  wooden  cross. 

"Nobody  ever  comes  here,"  Sylvia  said.  "Hardly  any- 
body comes  to  church  ever.  The  people  don't  like  Mr. 
Dorward's  services.  They  say  he  can't  be  heard." 

Suddenly  the  vicar  himself  appeared,  and  seemed 
greatly  pleased  to  see  Sylvia  and  her  visitors;  she  felt  a 
little  guilty,  because,  though  she  was  great  friends  with 
Mr.  Dorward,  she  had  never  been  inside  the  church,  nor 
had  he  ever  hinted  he  would  like  her  to  come.  It  would 
seem  so  unkind  for  her  to  come  like  this  for  the  first  time 
with  strangers,  as  if  the  church  which  she  knew  he  deeply 
loved  was  nothing  but  a  tea-time  entertainment.  There 
was  no  trace  of  reproachfulness  in  his  manner,  as  he 
showed  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  the  vestments  and  a 
little  image  of  the  Virgin  in  peach-blow  glaze  that  he 
moved  caressingly  into  the  sunlight,  as  a  child  might 


184  Sylvia    Scarlett 

fondle  reverently  a  favorite  doll.  He  spoke  of  his  plans  for 
restoration  and  unrolled  the  design  of  a  famous  architect, 
adding  with  a  smile  for  Sylvia  that  the  lay  rector  dis- 
approved of  it  thoroughly.  They  left  him  arranging  the 
candlesticks  on  the  altar,  a  half-pathetic,  half-humorous 
figure  that  seemed  to  be  playing  a  solitary  game. 

"And  you  say  nobody  goes  to  his  church!"  Miss  Home 
exclaimed.  "But  he's  most  polite  and  charming." 

"Scarcely  anybody  goes,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Emmie,"  said  Miss  Home,  standing  upright  and  flash- 
ing forth  an  eagle's  glance.  "We  will  attend  his  service." 

"That  is  a  very  good  idea  of  yours,  Adelaide,"  Miss 
Hobart  replied. 

Then  they  got  into  the  governess-car  with  much  deter- 
mination, and  with  friendly  waves  of  the  hand  to  Sylvia 
set  out  back  to  Oaktown. 

When  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  had  left,  Sylvia 
went  up-stairs  to  have  it  out  with  Philip.  At  this  rate 
there  would  very  soon  be  a  crisis  in  their  married  life.  She 
was  a  little  disconcerted  by  his  getting  up  the  moment  she 
entered  his  room  and  coming  to  meet  her  with  an  apology. 

"Dearest  Sylvia,  you  can  call  me  what  you  will;  I  shall 
deserve  the  worst.  I  can't  understand  my  behavior  this 
afternoon.  I  think  I  must  have  been  working  so  hard  that 
my  nerves  are  hopelessly  jangled.  I  very  nearly  followed 
you  into  the  churchyard  to  make  myself  most  humbly 
pleasant,  but  I  saw  Dorward  go  'round  almost  immediately 
afterward,  and  I  could  not  have  met  him  in  the  mood  I 
was  in  without  being  unpardonably  rude." 

He  waited  for  her  with  an  arm  stretched  out  in  recon- 
ciliation, but  Sylvia  hesitated. 

"It's  all  very  well  to  hurt  my  feelings  like  that  because 
you  happened  to  be  feeling  in  a  bad  temper,"  she  said, 
"and  then  think  you've  only  got  to  make  a  pleasant  little 
speech  to  put  everything  right  again.  Besides,  it  isn't  only 
to-day;  it's  day  after  day  since  we've  been  married.  I 
feel  like  Gulliver  when  he  was  being  tied  up  by  the  Lilli- 
putians. I  can't  find  any  one  big  rope  that's  destroying 
my  freedom,  but  somehow  or  other  my  freedom  is  being 
destroyed.  Did  you  marry  me  casually,  as  people  buy 
birds,  to  put  me  in  a  cage?" 


Sylvia    Scarlett  185 

"My  dear,  I  married  you  because  I  loved  you.  You 
know  I  fought  against  the  idea  of  marrying  you  for  a  long 
time,  but  I  loved  you  too  much." 

"Are  you  afraid  of  my  loyalty?"  she  demanded.  "Do 
you  think  I  go  to  Oaktown  to  be  made  love  to?" 

"Sylvia!"  he  protested. 

"I  go  there  because  I'm  bored,  bored,  endlessly,  hope- 
lessly, paralyzingly  bored.  It's  my  own  fault.  I  never 
ought  to  have  married  you.  I  can't  think  why  I  did,  but 
at  least  it  wasn't  for  any  mercenary  reason.  You're  not 
to  believe  that.  Philip,  I  do  like  you,  but  why  will  you 
always  upset  me?" 

He  thought  for  a  moment  and  asked  her  presently  what 
.greater  freedom  she  wanted,  what  kind  of  freedom. 

"That's  it,"  she  went  on.  "I  told  you  I  couldn't  find 
any  one  big  rope  that  bound  me.  There  isn't  a  single 
thread  I  can't  snap  with  perfect  ease,  but  it's  the  multitude 
of  insignificant  little  threads  that  almost  choke  me." 

"You  told  me  you  thought  you  would  like  to  live  in  the 
country,"  he  reminded  her. 

"I  do,  but,  Philip,  do  remember  that  I  really  am  still  a 
child.  I've  got  a  deep  voice  and  I  can  talk  like  a  pro- 
fessor, but  I'm  still  a  hopeless  kid.  I  oughtn't  to  have  to 
tell  you  this.  You  ought  to  see  it  for  yourself  if  you  love 
me." 

"Dearest  Sylvia,  I'm  always  telling  you  how  young  you 
are,  and  there's  nothing  that  annoys  you  more,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  Philip,  Philip,  you  really  are  pathetic!  When  did 
you  ever  meet  a  young  person  who  liked  to  have  her  youth 
called  attention  to?  You're  so  remote  from  beginning  to 
understand  how  to  manage  me,  and  I'm  still  manageable. 
Very  soon  I  sha'n't  be,  though;  and  there'll  be  such  a 
dismal  smash-up." 

"If  you'd  only  explain  exactly,"  he  began;  but  she 
interrupted  him  at  once. 

"My  dear  man,  if  I  explain  and  you  take  notes  and  con- 
sult them  for  your  future  behavior  to  me,  do  you  think 
that's  going  to  please  me?  It  can  all  be  said  in  two  words. 
I'm  human.  For  the  love  of  God  be  human  yourself." 

"Look  here,  let's  go  away  for  a  spell,"  said  Philip, 
brightly. 


186  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"The  cat's  miaowing.  Let's  open  the  door.  No, 
seriously,  I  think  I  should  like  to  go  away  from  here  for  a 
while."" 

"  By  yourself?"  he  asked,  in  a  frightened  voice. 

"Oh  no,  not  by  myself.  I'm  perfectly  content  with 
you.  Only  don't  suggest  the  Italian  lakes  and  try  to  revive 
the  early  sweets  of  our  eight  months  of  married  life.  Don't 
let's  have  a  sentimental  rebuilding.  It  will  be  so  much 
more  practical  to  build  up  something  quite  new." 

Philip  really  seemed  to  have  been  shaken  by  this  con- 
versation. Sylvia  knew  he  had  not  finished  his  text,  but 
he  put  everything  aside  in  order  not  to  keep  her  waiting; 
and  before  May  was  half-way  through  they  had  reached 
the  island  of  Sirene.  Here  they  stayed  two  months  in  a 
crumbling  pension  upon  the  cliff's  edge  until  Sylvia  was 
sun-dried  without  and  within;  she  was  enthralled  by  the 
evidences  of  imperial  Rome,  and  her  only  regret  was  that 
she  did  not  meet  an  eccentric  Englishman  who  was  reputed 
to  have  found,  when  digging  a  cistern,  at  least  one  of  the 
lost  books  of  Elephantis,  which  he  read  in  olive-groves  by 
the  light  of  the  moon.  However,  she  met  several  other 
eccentrics  of  different  nationalities  and  was  pleased  to  find 
that  Philip's  humanism  was,  with  Sirene  as  a  background, 
strong  enough  to  lend  him  an  appearance  of  humanity. 
They  planned,  like  all  other  visitors  to  Sirene,  to  build  a 
big  villa  there;  they  listened  like  all  other  visitors  to  the 
Italian  and  foreign  inhabitants'  depreciation  of  every  villa 
but  the  one  in  which  they  lived,  either  because  they  liked 
it  or  because  they  wanted  to  let  it  or  because  they  wished 
new-comers  to  fall  into  snares  laid  for  themselves  when 
they  were  new-comers. 

At  last  they  tore  themselves  from  Sirenean  dreams  and 
schemes,  chiefly  because  Sylvia  had  accepted  an  invitation 
to  stay  at  Arbour  End.  They  lingered  for  a  while  at 
Naples  on  the  way  home,  where  Sylvia  looked  about  her 
with  Petronian  eyes,  so  much  so,  indeed,  that  a  guide 
mistook  what  was  merely  academic  curiosity  for  something 
more  practical.  It  cost  Philip  fifty  liras  and  nearly  all  the 
Italian  he  knew  to  get  rid  of  the  pertinacious  and  ingenious 
fellow. 

Arbour  End  had  not  changed  at  all  in  a  year.    Sylvia, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  187 

when  she  thought  of  Green  Lanes,  laughed  a  little  bitterly 
at  herself  (but  not  so  bitterly  as  she  would  have  laughed 
before  the  benevolent  sunshine  of  Sirene)  for  ever  sup- 
posing that  she  and  Philip  could  create  anything  like  it. 
Gladys  and  Enid,  though  they  were  now  fifteen,  had  not 
yet  lengthened  their  frocks;  their  mother  could  not  yet 
bring  herself  to  contemplate  the  disappearance  of  those 
slim  black  legs. 

"But  we  shall  have  to  next  term,"  Gladys  said,  "be- 
cause Miss  Ashley's  written  home  about  them." 

"And  that  stuck-up  thing  Gwendyr  Jones  said  they 
were  positively  disgusting,"  Enid  went  on. 

"Yes,"  added  Gladys,  "and  I  told  her  they  weren't  half 
as  disgusting  as  her  ankles.  And  they  aren't,  are  they, 
Sylvia?" 

"Some  of  the  girls  call  her  marrow-bones,"  said  Enid. 

Sylvia  would  have  preferred  to  avoid  any  intimate  talks 
with  Mrs.  Worsley,  but  it  was  scarcely  to  be  expected  that 
she  would  succeed,  and  one  night,  looking  ridiculously 
young  with  her  fair  hair  hanging  down  her  back,  she  came 
to  Sylvia's  bedroom,  and  sitting  down  at  the  end  of  her 
bed,  began: 

"Well,  are  you  glad  you  got  married?" 

At  any  rate,  Sylvia  thought,  she  had  the  tact  not  to  ask 
of  she  was  glad  she  had  taken  her  advice. 

"I'm  not  so  sorry  as  I  was,"  Sylvia  told  her. 

"Ah,  didn't  I  warn  you  against  the  first  year?  You'll 
see  that  I  was  right." 

"  But  I  was  not  sorry  in  the  way  you  prophesied.  I've 
never  had  any  bothers  with  the  country.  Philip's  sister  was 
rather  a  bore,  always  wondering  about  his  clothes  for  the 
year  after  next;  but  we  made  a  treaty,  and  she's  been 
excluded  from  The  Old  Farm — wait  a  bit,  only  till  next 
October.  By  Jove!  I  say, the  treaty '11  have  to  be  renewed. 
I  don't  believe  even  memories  of  Sirene  would  enable  me 
to  deal  with  Gertrude  this  winter.  No,  what  worries  me 
most  in  marriage  is  not  other  people,  but  our  two  selves. 
I  hate  writing  Sylvia  Iredale  instead  of  Sylvia  Scarlett. 
Quite  unreasonable  of  me,  but  most  worries  are  unreason- 
able. I  don't  want  to  be  owned.  I'm  a  book  to  Philip; 
he  bought  me  for  my  binding  and  never  intended  to  read 


i88  Sylvia    Scarlett 

me,  even  if  he  could.  I  don't  mean  to  say  I  was  beautiful, 
but  I  was  what  an  American  girl  at  Hornton  House  used 
to  call  cunning;  the  pattern  was  unusual,  and  he  couldn't 
resist  it.  But  now  that  he's  bought  me,  he  expects  me  to 
stay  quite  happily  on  a  shelf  in  a  glass  case;  one  day  he 
may  perhaps  try  to  read  me,  but  at  present,  so  long  as  I'm 
taken  out  and  dusted — our  holiday  at  Sirene  was  a  dust- 
ing— he  thinks  that's  enough.  But  the  worm  that  flies  in 
the  heart  of  the  storm  has  got  in,  Victoria,  and  is  making  a 
much  more  unusual  pattern  across  my  inside — I  say,  I 
think  it's  about  time  to  drop  this  metaphor,  don't  you  ?" 

"I  don't  think  I  quite  understand  all  you're  saying," 
said  Victoria  Worsley. 

Sylvia  brought  her  hand  from  beneath  the  bedclothes 
and  took  her  friend's. 

"Does  it  matter?" 

"Oh,  but  I  like  to  understand  what  people  are  saying," 
Mrs.  Worsley  insisted.  "That's  why  we  never  go  abroad 
for  our  holidays.  But,  Sylvia,  about  being  owned,  which 
is  where  I  stopped  understanding.  Lennie  doesn't  own 
me." 

"No,  you  own  him,  but  I  don't  own  Philip." 

"I  expect  you  will,  my  dear,  after  you've  been  married 
a  little  longer." 

"You  think  I  shall  acquire  him  in  monthly  instalments. 
I  should  find  at  the  end  the  cost  too  much  in  repairs,  like 
Fred  Organ." 

"Who's  he?" 

"Hube's  brother,  the  cabman.    Don't  you  remember?" 

"Oh,  of  course,  how  silly  of  me!  I  thought  it  might  be 
an  Italian  you  met  at  Sirene.  You've  made  me  feel  quite 
sad,  Sylvia.  I  always  want  everybody  to  be  happy,"  she 
sighed.  "I  am  happy — perfectly  happy — in  spite  of  being 
married." 

"Nobody's  happy  because  of  being  married,"  Sylvia 
enunciated,  rather  sententiously. 

"What  nonsense  you  talk,  and  you're  only  just  eigh- 
teen!" 

"That's  why  I  talk  nonsense,"  Sylvia  said,  "but  all  the 
same  it's  very  true  nonsense.  You  and  Lennie  couldn't 
have  ever  been  anything  but  happy." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  189 

"Darling  Lennie,  I  think  it  must  be  because  he's  so 
stupid.  I  wonder  if  he's  smoking  in  bed.  He  always  does 
if  I  leave  him  to  go  and  talk  to  anybody.  Good  night, 
dear." 

Sylvia  returned  to  her  book,  wondering  more  than  ever 
how  she  could  have  supposed  a  year  ago  that  she  could 
follow  Victoria  Worsley  along  the  pathway  of  her  simple 
and  happy  life. 

The  wnole  family  from  Arbour  End  came  to  London  for 
the  ten  days  before  term  began,  and  Sylvia  stayed  with 
them  at  a  hotel.  Gladys  and  Enid  had  to  get  their  new 
frocks,  and  certain  gaps  in  Hercules's  education  had  to  be 
filled  up,  such  as  visiting  the  Zoo  and  the  Tower  of  London 
and  the  Great  Wheel  at  Earl's  Court.  Sylvia  and  the 
twins  searched  in  vain  for  the  Hall  of  a  Thousand  and  One 
Marvels,  but  they  found  Mabel  selling  Turkish  Delight  by 
herself  at  a  small  stall  in  another  part  of  the  Exhibition. 
Sylvia  thought  the  best  way  of  showing  her  penitence  for 
the  heartless  way  she  had  treated  her  was  to  buy  as  much 
Turkish  Delight  as  could  possibly  be  carried  away,  since 
she  probably  received  a  percentage  on  the  takings.  Mabel 
seemed  to  bear  no  resentment,  but  she  was  rather  shy, 
because  she  mistook  the  twins  for  Sylvia's  sisters-in-law 
and  therefore  avoided  the  only  topic  upon  which  she  could 
talk  freely,  which  was  men.  They  left  the  florid  and  accom- 
modating creature  with  a  callow  youth  who  was  leaning 
familiarly  across  the  counter  and  smacking  with  a  cane  his 
banana-colored  boots;  then  they  ate  as  much  Turkish 
Delight  as  they  could  and  divided  the  rest  among  some 
ducks  and  the  Kaffirs  in  the  kraal. 

Sylvia  also  visited  Hornton  House  and  explained  to 
Miss  Ashley  why  she  had  demanded  the  banishment  of 
Gertrude  from  Green  Lanes. 

"  Poor  Gertrude,  she  was  very  much  upset,"  Miss  Ashley 
said. 

Sylvia,  softened  by  the  memories  of  a  so  happy  year 
that  her  old  school  evoked,  made  up  her  mind  not  to  carry 
on  the  war  against  Gertrude.  She  felt,  too,  a  greater 
charity  toward  Philip,  who,  after  all,  had  been  the  cause  of 
her  being  given  that  so  happy  year,  and  she  went  back  to 
Hampshire  with  the  firm  intention  of  encouraging  this 


i  go  Sylvia    Scarlett 

new  mood  that  the  last  four  months  had  created  in  her. 
Philip  was  waiting  on  the  platform  and  was  so  glad  to  see 
her  again  that  he  drove  even  more  absent-mindedly  than 
usual,  until  she  took  the  reins  from  him  and  whipped  up 
the  horse  with  a  quite  positive  anticipation  of  home. 

Sylvia  learned  from  Philip  that  the  visit  of  Miss  Home 
and  Miss  Hobart  had  influenced  other  lives  than  their 
own,  for  it  seemed  that  Miss  Home's  announcement  of 
their  attendance  in  future  at  Mr.  Dorward's  empty  church 
had  been  fully  carried  out.  Not  a  Sunday  passed  but  that 
they  drove  up  in  the  governess-car  to  Mass,  so  Philip  said 
with  a  wry  face  for  the  word;  what  was  more,  they  stayed 
to  lunch  with  the  vicar,  presided  at  the  Sunday-school,  and 
attended  the  evening  service,  which  had  been  put  forward 
half  an  hour  to  suit  their  supper. 

"They  absolutely  rule  Green  Lanes  ecclesiastically," 
Philip  said.  "And  some  of  the  mercenary  bumpkins  and 
boobies  'round  here  have  taken  to  going  to  church  for  what 
they  can  get  out  of  the  two  old  ladies.  I'm  glad  to  say, 
however,  that  the  farmers  and  their  families  haven't  come 
'round  yet." 

Sylvia  said  she  was  glad  for  Mr.  Dorward's  sake,  and  she 
wondered  why  Philip  made  such  a  fuss  about  the  form  of  a 
service  in  the  reality  of  which,  whatever  way  it  was  pre- 
sented, he  had  no  belief. 

"I  suppose  you're  right,"  he  agreed.  " Perhaps  what 
I'm  really  afraid  of  is  that  our  fanatical  vicar  will  really 
convert  the  parish  to  his  childish  religion.  Upon  my  soul, 
I  believe  Miss  Home  has  her  eye  upon  me.  I  know  she's 
been  holding  forth  upon  my  iniquitous  position  as  lay 
rector,  and  these  confounded  Radicals  will  snatch  hold  of 
anything  to  create  prejudice  against  landowners." 

"Why  don't  you  make  friends  with  Mr.  Dorward?" 
Sylvia  suggested.  "You  could  surely  put  aside  your 
religious  differences  and  talk  about  the  classics." 

"I  dare  say  I'm  bigoted  in  my  own  way,"  Philip  an- 
swered. "But  I  can't  stand  a  priest,  just  as  some  people 
can't  stand  cats  or  snakes.  It's  a  positively  physical 
repulsion  that  I  can't  get  over.  No,  I'm  afraid  I  must 
leave  Dorward  to  you,  Sylvia.  I  don't  think  there's  much 
danger  of  your  falling  a  victim  to  man-millinery.  It  '11  take 


Sylvia    Scarlett  191 

all  your  strength  of  mind,  however,  to  resist  the  malice  of 
these  two  old  witches,  and  I  wager  you'll  be  excommuni- 
cated from  the  society  of  Tintown  in  next  to  no  time." 

Sylvia  found  that  Philip  had  by  no  means  magnified  the 
activities  of  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart,  and  for  the  first 
time  on  a  Sunday  morning  at  Green  Lanes  a  thin  black 
stream  of  worshipers  flowed  past  the  windows  of  The  Old 
Farm  after  service.  It  was  more  than  curiosity  could  bear; 
without  saying  a  word  to  anybody  Sylvia  attended  the 
evening  service  herself.  The  church  was  very  small,  and 
her  entrance  would  have  attracted  much  more  attention 
than  it  did  if  Ernie,  who  was  holding  the  thurible  for  Mr. 
Dorward  to  put  in  the  incense,  had  not  given  at  that 
moment  a  mighty  sneeze,  scattering  incense  and  charcoal 
upon  the  altar  steps  and  frightening  the  woman  at  the  har- 
monium into  a  violent  discord,  from  which  the  choir  was 
rescued  by  Miss  Home's  unmoved  and  harsh  soprano  that 
positively  twisted  back  the  craning  necks  of  the  congre- 
gation into  their  accustomed  apathy.  Sylvia  wondered 
whether  fear,  conversion,  or  extra  wages  had  induced 
Ernie  to  put  on  that  romantic  costume  which  gave  him  the 
appearance  of  a  rustic  table  covered  with  a  tea-cloth,  as  he 
waited  while  the  priest  tried  to  evoke  a  few  threads  of 
smoke  from  the  ruin  caused  by  his  sneeze.  Sylvia  was  so 
much  occupied  in  watching  Ernie  that  she  did  not  notice 
the  rest  of  the  congregation  had  sat  down.  Mr.  Dorward 
must  have  seen  her,  for  he  had  thrown  off  the  heavy  vest- 
ment he  was  wearing  and  was  advancing  apparently  to  say 
how  d'ye  do.  No,  he  seemed  to  think  better  of  it,  and  had 
turned  aside  to  read  from  a  large  book,  but  what  he  read 
neither  Sylvia  nor  the  congregation  had  any  idea.  She 
decided  that  all  this  standing  up  and  kneeling  and  sitting 
down  again  was  too  confusing  for  a  novice,  and  during  the 
rest  of  the  service  she  remained  seated,  which  was  at  once 
the  most  comfortable  and  the  least  conspicuous  attitude. 
Sylvia  had  intended  to  slip  out  before  the  service  was  over, 
as  she  did  not  want  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  to  ex- 
ult over  her  imaginary  conversion,  but  the  finale  came 
sooner  than  she  expected  in  a  fierce  hymnal  outburst 
during  which  Mr.  Dorward  hurriedly  divested  himself  and 
reached  the  vestianel.  Miss  Home  had  scarcely  thumped 

13 


192  Sylvia    Scarlett 

the  last  beat  on  the  choir-boy's  head  in  front  of  her,  the 
echoes  of  the  last  amen  had  scarcely  died  away,  before  the 
female  sexton,  an  old  woman  called  Cassandra  Batt,  was 
turning  out  the  oil-lamps  and  the  little  congregation  had 
gathered  'round  the  vicar  in  the  west  door  to  hear  Miss 
Home's  estimate  of  its  behavior.  There  was  no  chance  for 
Sylvia  to  escape. 

"Ernest,"  said  Miss  Home,  "what  did  you  sneeze  for 
during  the  Magnificat?  Father  Dorward  never  got 
through  with  censing  the  altar,  you  bad  boy." 

"The  stoff  got  all  up  me  nose,"  said  Ernie.  "Oi  couldn't 
help  meself." 

"Next  time  you  want  to  sneeze,"  said  Miss  Hobart, 
kindly,  "press  your  top  lip  below  the  nose,  and  you'll 
keep  it  back." 

"I  got  too  much  to  do,"  Ernie  muttered,  "and  too  much 
to  think  on." 

"Jane  Frost,"  said  Miss  Home,  quickly  turning  the 
direction  of  her  attack,  "you  must  practise  all  this  week. 
Suppose  Father  Dorward  gets  a  new  organ  ?  You  wouldn't 
like  not  to  be  allowed  to  play  on  it.  Some  of  your  notes 
to-night  weren't  like  a  musical  instrument  at  all.  The 
Nunc  Dimittis  was  more  like  water  running  out  of  a  bath. 
'Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace,'  are 
the  words,  not  in  pieces,  which  was  what  it  sounded  like 
the  way  you  played  it." 

Miss  Jane  Frost,  a  daughter  of  the  woman  who  kept  the 
Green  Lanes  shop,  blushed  as  deeply  as  her  anemia  would 
let  her,  and  promised  she  would  do  better  next  week. 

"That's  right,  Jane,"  said  Miss  Hobart,  whose  part 
seemed  to  be  the  consolation  of  Miss  Home's  victims.  "I 
dare  say  the  pedal  is  a  bit  obstinate." 

"Oh,  it's  turble  obstinate,"  said  Cassandra,  the  sexton, 
who,  having  extinguished  all  the  lamps,  now  elbowed  her 
way  through  the  clustered  congregation,  a  lighted  taper  in 
her  hand.  "I  jumped  on  un  once  or  twice  this  morning 
to  make  um  a  bit  easier  like,  but  a  groaned  at  me  like  a 
wicked  old  toad.  It's  ile  that  a  wants." 

The  congregation,  on  which  a  good  deal  of  grease  was 
being  scattered  by  Cassandra's  taper  in  her  excitement, 
hastened  to  support  her  diagnosis. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  193 

"Oh  yass,  yass,  'tis  ile  that  a  wants." 

"I  will  bring  a  bottle  of  oil  up  during  the  week,"  Miss 
Home  proclaimed.  "Good  night,  everybody,  and  remem- 
ber to  be  punctual  next  Sunday." 

The  congregation  murmured  its  good  night,  and  Sylvia, 
to  whom  it  probably  owed  such  a  speedy  dismissal,  was 
warmly  greeted  by  Miss  Home. 

"So  glad  you've  come,  Mrs.  Iredale,  though  I  wish 
you'd  brought  the  lay  rector.  Lay  rector,  indeed!  Sakes 
alive,  what  will  they  invent  next?" 

"Yes,  we're  so  glad  you've  come,  dear,"  Miss  Hobart 
added.  Mr.  Dorward  came  up  in  his  funny  quick  way. 
When  they  were  all  walking  across  the  churchyard,  he 
whispered  to  Sylvia,  in  his  funny  quick  voice: 

"Church  fowls,  church  fowls,  you  know!  Mustn't  dis- 
courage them.  Pious  fowls!  Godly  fowls!  An  example 
for  the  parish.  Better  attendance  lately." 

Then  he  caught  up  the  two  ladies  and  helped  them  into 
the  vehicle,  wishing  them  a  pleasant  drive  and  promising  a 
nearly  full  moon  shortly,  after  Medworth,  very  much  as  if 
the  moon  was  really  made  of  cheese  and  would  be  eaten  for 
supper  by  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart. 

When  Sylvia  got  back  to  The  Old  Farm  she  amused 
Philip  so  much  with  her  account  of  the  service  that  he 
forgot  to  be  angry  with  her  for  doing  what  at  first  he 
maintained  put  him  in  a  false  position. 

All  that  autumn  and  winter  Miss  Home  and  Miss 
Hobart  wrestled  with  Satan  for  the  souls  of  the  hamlet; 
incidentally  they  wrestled  with  him  for  Sylvia's  soul,  but 
she  scratched  the  event  by  ceasing  to  appear  at  all  in 
church,  and  intercourse  between  them  became  less 
frequent;  the  friends  of  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  had 
to  be  all  or  nothing,  and  not  the  least  divergence  of  belief 
or  opinion,  manners  or  policy,  was  tolerated  by  these  two 
bigoted  old  ladies.  The  congregation,  notwithstanding 
their  efforts,  remained  stationary,  much  to  Philip's 
satisfaction. 

"The  truth  is,"  he  said,  "that  the  measure  of  their 
power  is  the  pocket.  Every  scamp  in  the  parish  who 
thinks  it  will  pay  him  to  go  to  church  is  going  to  church. 
The  others  don't  go  at  all  or  walk  over  to  Medworth." 


194  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Her  contemplation  of  the  progress  of  religion  in  Green 
Lanes,  which,  however  much  she  affected  to  laugh  at  it, 
could  not  help  interesting  Sylvia  on  account  of  her  eccen- 
tric friend  the  vicar,  was  temporarily  interrupted  by  a  visit 
from  Gertrude  Iredale.  Remembering  what  Miss  Ashley 
had  told  her,  Sylvia  had  insisted  upon  Philip's  asking  his 
sister  to  stay,  and  he  had  obviously  been  touched  by  her 
suggestion.  Gertrude  perhaps  had  also  taken  some  advice 
from  Miss  Ashley,  for  she  was  certainly  less  inclined  to 
wonder  what  her  brother  would  do  about  his  clothes  the 
year  after  next.  She  could  not,  however,  altogether  keep 
to  herself  her  criticism  of  the  housewifery  at  The  Old 
Farm,  a  simple  business  in  Sylvia's  eyes,  which  consisted 
of  letting  the  cook  do  exactly  as  she  liked,  with  what  she 
decided  were  very  satisfactory  results. 

"But  it's  so  extravagant,"  Gertrude  objected. 

"Well,  Philip  doesn't  grumble.  We  can  afford  to  pay  a 
little  extra  every  week  to  have  the  house  comfortably 
run." 

"But  the  principle  is  so  bad,"  Gertrude  insisted. 

"Oh,  principle,"  said  Sylvia  in  an  airy  way,  which  must 
have  been  galling  to  her  sister-in-law.  "I  don't  believe  in 
principles.  Principles  are  only  excuses  for  what  we  want 
to  think  or  what  we  want  to  do." 

"Don't  you  believe  in  abstract  morality?"  Gertrude 
asked,  taking  off  her  glasses  and  gazing  with  weak  and 
earnest  eyes  at  Sylvia. 

"I  don't  believe  in  anything  abstract,"  Sylvia  replied. 

"How  strange!"  the  other  murmured.  "Goodness  me! 
if  I  didn't  believe  in  abstract  morality  I  don't  know  where 
I  should  be — or  what  I  should  do." 

Sylvia  regarded  the  potential  sinner  with  amused 
curiosity. 

"Do  tell  me  what  you  might  do,"  she  begged  "Would 
you  live  with  a  man  without  marrying  him  ?" 

"  Please  don't  be  coarse,"  said  Gertrude.  "I  don't  like  it." 

"I  could  put  it  much  more  coarsely,"  Sylvia  said,  with  a 
laugh.  "Would  you—" 

"Sylvia!"  Gertrude  whistled  through  her  teeth  in  an 
agony  of  apprehensive  modesty.  "I  entreat  you  not  to 
continue," 


Sylvia    Scarlett  195 

"There  you  are,"  said  Sylvia.  "That  shows  what 
rubbish  all  your  scruples  are.  You're  shocked  at  what  you 
thought  I  was  going  to  say.  Therefore  you  ought  to  be 
shocked  at  yourself.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  I  was  going  to 
ask  if  you  would  marry  a  man  without  loving  him." 

"If  I  were  to  marry,"  Gertrude  said,  primly,  "I  should 
certainly  want  to  love  my  husband." 

"Yes,  but  what  do  you  understand  by  love?  Do  you 
mean  by  love  the  emotion  that  makes  people  go  mad  to 
possess — " 

Gertrude  rose  from  her  chair.  "Sylvia,  the  whole 
conversation  is  becoming  extremely  unpleasant.  I  must 
ask  you  either  to  stop  or  let  me  go  out  of  the  room." 

"You  needn't  be  afraid  of  any  personal  revelations,'* 
Sylvia  assured  her.  "I've  never  been  in  love  that  way.  I 
only  wanted  to  find  out  if  you  had  been  and  ask  you 
about  it." 

"Never,"  said  Gertrude,  decidedly.  "I've  certainly 
never  been  in  love  like  that,  and  I  hope  I  never  shall." 

"I  think  you're  quite  safe.  And  I'm  beginning  to  think 
I'm  quite  safe,  too,"  Sylvia  added.  "However,  if  you 
won't  discuss  abstract  morality  in  an  abstract  way,  you 
mustn't  expect  me  to  do  so,  and  the  problem  of  house- 
keeping returns  to  the  domain  of  practical  morality,  where 
principles  don't  count." 

Sylvia  decided  after  this  conversation  to  accept  Ger- 
trude as  a  joke,  and  she  ceased  to  be  irritated  by  her  any 
longer,  though  her  sister-in-law  stayed  from  Christmas  till 
the  end  of  February.  In  one  way  her  presence  was  of 
positive  utility,  because  Philip,  who  was  very  much  on  the 
lookout  for  criticism  of  his  married  life,  was  careful  not  to 
find  fault  with  Sylvia  while  she  remained  at  Green  Lanes; 
it  also  acted  as  a  stimulus  to  Sylvia  herself,  who  used  her 
like  a  grindstone  on  which  to  sharpen  her  wits.  Another 
advantage  from  Gertrude's  visit  was  that  Philip  was  able 
to  finish  his  text,  thanks  to  her  industrious  docketing  and 
indexing  and  generally  fussing  about  in  his  study.  There- 
fore, when  Sylvia  proposed  that  the  twins  should  spend 
their  Easter  holidays  at  The  Old  Farm,  he  had  no  objection 
to  offer. 

The  prospect  of  the  twins'  visit  kept  Sylvia  at  the  peak 


196  Sylvia    Scarlett 

of  pleasurable  expectation  throughout  the  month  of  March, 
and  when  at  last,  on  a  budding  morn  in  early  April,  she 
drove  through  sky-enchanted  puddles  to  meet  them,  she 
sang  for  the  first  time  in  months  the  raggle-taggle  gipsies, 
and  reached  the  railway  station  fully  half  an  hour  before 
the  train  was  due.  Nobody  got  out  but  the  twins;  yet 
they  laughed  and  talked  so  much,  the  three  of  them,  in  the 
first  triumph  of  meeting,  that  several  passengers  thought 
the  wayside  station  must  be  more  important  than  it  was, 
and  asked  anxiously  if  this  was  Galton. 

Gladys  and  Enid  had  grown  a  good  deal  in  six  months, 
and  now  with  their  lengthened  frocks  and  tied-back  hair 
they  looked  perhaps  older  than  sixteen.  Their  faces,  how- 
ever, had  not  grown  longer  with  their  frocks;  they  were  as 
full  of  spirits  as  ever,  and  Sylvia  found  that  while  they  still 
charmed  her  as  of  old  with  that  quality  of  demanding  to 
be  loved  for  the  sheer  grace  of  their  youth,  they  were  now 
capable  of  giving  her  the  intimate  friendship  she  so  greatly 
desired. 

"You  darlings,"  she  cried.  "You're  like  champagne- 
cup  in  two  beautiful  crystal  glasses  with  rose-leaves  floating 
about  on  top." 

The  twins,  who  with  all  that  zest  in  their  own  beauty 
which  is  the  prerogative  of  a  youth  unhampered  by 
parental  jealousy,  frankly  loved  to  be  admired;  Sylvia's 
admiration  never  made  them  self-conscious,  because  it 
seemed  a  natural  expression  of  affection.  Their  attitude 
toward  Philip  was  entirely  free  from  any  conventional 
respect;  as  Sylvia's  husband  he  was  candidate  for  all  the 
love  they  had  for  her,  but  when  they  found  that  Philip 
treated  them  as  Sylvia's  toys  they  withheld  the  honor  of 
election  and  began  to  criticize  him.  When  he  seemed 
shocked  at  their  criticism  they  began  to  tease  him,  explain- 
ing to  Sylvia  that  he  had  obviously  never  been  teased  in 
his  life.  Philip,  for  his  part,  found  them  precocious  and 
vain,  which  annoyed  Sylvia  and  led  to  her  seeking  diver- 
sions and  entertainment  for  the  twins'  holidays  outside 
The  Old  Farm.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  she  had  no  need  to 
search  far,  because  they  both  took  a  great  fancy  to  Mr. 
Dorward,  who  turned  out  to  have  an  altogether  unusual 
gift  for  drawing  nonsensical  pictures,  which  were  almost 


Sylvia    Scarlett  197 

as  funny  as  his  own  behavior,  that  behavior  which  irri- 
tated so  many  more  people  than  it  amused. 

The  twins  teased  Mr.  Dorward  a  good  deal  about  his 
love-affair  with  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart,  and  though 
this  teasing  may  only  have  coincided  with  Mr.  Dorward's 
previous  conviction  that  the  two  ladies  were  managing  him 
and  his  parish  rather  too  much  for  his  dignity  and  certainly 
too  much  for  his  independence,  there  was  no  doubt  that 
the  quarrel  between  them  was  prepared  during  the  time 
that  Gladys  and  Enid  were  staying  at  Green  Lanes; 
indeed,  Sylvia  thought  she  could  name  the  actual  after- 
noon. 

Sylvia's  intercourse  with  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart 
was  still  friendly  enough  to  necessitate  an  early  visit  to 
Sunny  Bank  to  present  the  twins.  The  two  ladies  were 
very  fond  of  what  they  called  "young  people,"  and  at  first 
they  were  enraptured  by  Gladys  and  Enid,  particularly 
when  they  played  some  absurd  school-girl's  trick  upon 
Major  Kettlewell.  Sylvia,  too,  had  by  her  tales  of  the 
island  of  Sirene  inspired  them  with  a  longing  to  go  there; 
they  liked  nothing  better  than  to  make  her  describe  the 
various  houses  and  villas  that  were  for  sale  or  to  let,  in 
every  one  of  which  in  turn  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart 
saw  themselves  installed. 

On  the  particular  afternoon  from  which  Sylvia  dated  the 
preparation  of  the  quarrel,  they  were  all  at  tea  with  Mr. 
Dorward  in  his  cottage.  The  conversation  came  round  to 
Sirene,  and  Sylvia  told  how  she  had  always  thought  that 
the  vicar  resembled  a  Roman  Emperor.  Was  it  Nero? 
He  was  perhaps  flattered  by  the  comparison,  notwith- 
standing the  ladies'  loud  exclamations  of  dissent,  and  was 
anxious  to  test  the  likeness  from  a  volume  of  engraved 
heads  which  he  produced.  With  Gladys  sitting  on  one 
arm  of  his  chair  and  Enid  on  the  other,  the  pages  were 
turned  over  slowly  to  allow  time  for  a  careful  examination 
of  each  head,  which  involved  a  good  deal  of  attention  to 
Mr.  Dorward's  own.  In  the  end  Nero  was  ruled  out  and 
a  more  obscure  Emperor  was  hailed  as  his  prototype,  after 
which  the  twins  rushed  out  into  the  garden  and  gathered 
strands  of  ivy  to  encircle  his  imperial  brow;  Miss  Home 
and  Miss  Hobart,  who  had  taken  no  part  in  the  discussion, 


198  Sylvia    Scarlett 

left  immediately  after  the  coronation,  and  though  it  was  a 
perfectly  fine  evening,  they  announced,  as  they  got  into 
their  vehicle,  that  it  looked  very  much  like  rain. 

Next  Sunday  the  ladies  came  to  church  as  usual,  but 
Mr.  Dorward  kept  them  waiting  half  an  hour  for  lunch 
while  he  showed  the  twins  his  ornaments  and  vestments, 
which  they  looked  at  solemnly  as  a  penance  for  having 
spent  most  of  the  service  with  their  handkerchiefs  in  their 
mouths.  What  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  said  at 
lunch  Sylvia  never  found  out,  but  they  drove  away  before 
Sunday-school  and  never  came  back  to  Green  Lanes, 
either  on  that  Sunday  or  on  any  Sunday  afterward. 

All  that  Mr.  Dorward  would  say  about  the  incident  was: 

"Church  fowls!  Chaste  fowls!  Chaste  and  holy,  but 
tiresome.  The  vicar  mustn't  be  managed.  Doesn't  like  it. 
Gets  frightened.  Felt  remote  at  lunch.  That  was  all. 
Would  keep  on  talking.  Got  bored  and  more  remote. 
Vicar  got  so  remote  that  he  had  to  finish  his  lunch  under 
the  table." 

"Oh  no,  you  didn't  really?"  cried  the  twins,  in  an 
ecstasy  of  pleasure.  "You  didn't  really  get  under  the 
table,  Mr.  Dorward  ?" 

"Of  course,  of  course,  of  course.  Vicar  always  speaks 
the  truth.  Delicious  lunch." 

Sylvia  had  to  tell  Philip  about  this  absurd  incident,  but 
he  would  only  say  that  the  man  was  evidently  a  buffoon  in 
private  as  well  as  in  public. 

"But,  Philip,  don't  you  think  it's  a  glorious  picture? 
We  laughed  till  we  were  tired." 

"Gladys  and  Enid  laugh  very  easily,"  he  answered. 
"  Personally  I  see  nothing  funny  in  a  man,  especially  a 
clergyman,  behaving  like  a  clown." 

"Oh,  Philip,  you're  impossible!"  Sylvia  cried. 

"Thanks,"  he  said,  dryly.  "I've  noticed  that  ever  since 
the  arrival  of  our  young  guests  you've  found  more  to  com- 
plain of  in  my  personality  even  than  formerly." 

"Young  guests!"  Sylvia  echoed,  scornfully.  "Who 
would  think,  to  hear  you  talk  now,  that  you  married  a 
child  ?  Really  you're  incomprehensible." 

"Impossible!  Incomprehensible!  In  fact  thoroughly 
negative,"  Philip  said. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  199 

Sylvia  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  left  him. 

The  twins  went  back  to  school  at  the  beginning  of  May, 
and  Sylvia,  who  missed  them  very  much,  had  to  fall  back 
on  Mr.  Dorward  to  remind  her  of  their  jolly  company. 
Their  intercourse,  which  the  twins  had  established  upon  a 
certain  plane,  continued  now  upon  the  same  plane.  Life 
had  to  be  regarded  as  Alice  saw  it  in  Wonderland  or 
through  the  looking-glass.  Sylvia  remembered  with  irony 
that  it  was  Philip  who  first  introduced  her  to  those  two 
books;  she  decided  he  had  only  liked  them  because  it  was 
correct  to  like  them.  Mr.  Dorward,  however,  actually  was 
somebody  in  that  fantastic  world,  not  like  anybody  Alice 
met  there,  but  another  inhabitant  whom  she  just  happened 
to  miss. 

To  whom  else  but  Mr.  Dorward  could  have  occurred 
that  ludicrous  adventure  when  he  was  staying  with  a 
brother  priest  in  a  remote  part  of  Devonshire? 

"I  always  heard  he  was  a  little  odd.  However,  we  had 
dinner  together  in  the  kitchen.  He  only  dined  in  the 
drawing-room  on  Thursdays." 

"When  did  he  dine  in  the  dining-room?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Never.  There  wasn't  a  dining-room.  There  were  a 
lot  of  rooms  that  were  going  to  be  the  dining-room,  but  it 
was  never  decided  which.  And  that  cast  a  gloom  over  the 
whole  house.  My  host  behaved  in  the  most  evangelical 
way  at  dinner  and  only  once  threw  the  salad  at  the  cook. 
After  dinner  we  sat  comfortably  before  the  kitchen  fire 
and  discussed  the  Mozarabic  rite  and  why  yellow  was  no 
longer  a  liturgical  color  for  confessors.  At  half  past 
eleven  my  host  suggested  it  was  time  to  go  to  bed.  He 
showed  me  up-stairs  to  a  very  nice  bedroom  and  said  good 
night,  advising  me  to  lock  the  door.  I  locked  the  door, 
undressed,  said  my  prayers,  and  got  into  bed.  I  was  just 
dozing  off  when  I  heard  a  loud  tap  at  the  door.  I  felt 
rather  frightened.  Rather  frightened  I  felt.  But  I  went 
to  the  door  and  opened  it.  Outside  in  the  passage  was  my 
host  in  his  nightgown  with  a  candlestick. 

"Past  twelve  o'clock,'  he  shouted.  'Time  to  change 
beds!'  and  before  I  knew  where  I  was  he  had  rushed  past 
me  and  shut  me  out  into  the  passage," 

"Did  you  change  beds?" 


2oo  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"There  wasn't  another  bed  in  the  house.  I  had  to  sleep 
in  one  of  the  rooms  that  might  one  day  be  a  dining-room, 
and  the  next  morning  a  rural  dean  arrived,  which  drove 
me  away.'1 

Gradually  from  underneath  what  Philip  called  "a  mass 
of  affectation/*  but  what  Sylvia  divined  as  an  armor 
assumed  against  the  unsympathetic  majority  by  a  shy, 
sensitive,  and  lovable  spirit,  [there  emerged  for  her  the 
reality  of  Mr.  Dorward.  She  began  to  comprehend  his 
faith,  which  was  as  simple  as  a  little  child's;  she  began  to 
realize  also  that  he  was  impelled  to  guard  what  he  held  to 
be  most  holy  against  the  jeers  of  unbelievers  by  diverting 
toward  his  own  eccentricity  the  world's  mockery.  He  was 
a  man  of  the  deepest  humility  who  considered  himself  in- 
capable of  proselytizing.  Sylvia  used  to  put  before  him 
sometimes  the  point  of  view  of  the  outside  world  and  try 
to  show  how  he  could  avoid  criticism  and  gain  adherents. 
He  used  always  to  reply  that  if  God  had  intended  him  to 
be  a  missionary  he  would  not  have  been  placed  in  this 
lowly  parish,  that  here  he  was  unable  to  do  much  harm, 
and  that  any  who  found  faith  in  his  church  must  find  it 
through  the  grace  of  God,  since  it  was  impossible  to 
suppose  they  would  ever  find  it  through  his  own  ministra- 
tions. He  insisted  that  people  who  stayed  away  from 
church  because  he  read  the  service  badly  or  burned  too 
many  candles  or  wore  vestments  were  only  ostentatious 
worshipers  who  looked  upon  the  church  as  wax-works 
must  regard  Madame  Tussaud's.  He  explained  that  he 
had  been  driven  to  discourage  the  work  of  Miss  Home  and 
Miss  Hobart  because  he  had  detected  in  himself  a  tendency 
toward  spiritual  pride  in  the  growth  of  a  congregation 
that  did  not  belong  either  to  him  or  to  God;  if  he  had 
tolerated  Miss  Home's  methods  for  a  time  it  was  because 
he  feared  to  oppose  the  Divine  intention.  However,  as 
soon  as  he  found  that  he  was  thinking  complacently  of  a 
congregation  of  twenty-four,  nearly  every  one  of  which 
was  a  pensioner  of  Miss  Home,  he  realized  that  they  were 
instruments  of  the  devil,  particularly  when  at  lunch  they 
began  to  suggest  .  .  . 

"What?"  Sylvia  asked,  when  he  paused. 

"The  only  thing  to  do  was  to  finish  my  lunch  under  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  201 

table,"  he  snapped;  nor  would  he  be  persuaded  to  discuss 
the  quarrel  further. 

Sylvia,  who  felt  that  the  poor  ladies  had,  after  all,  been 
treated  in  rather  a  cavalier  fashion  and  was  reproaching 
herself  for  having  deserted  them,  went  down  to  Oaktown 
shortly  after  this  to  call  at  Sunny  Bank.  They  received 
her  with  freezing  coldness,  particularly  Miss  Hobart, 
whose  eyes  under  lowering  eyelids  were  sullen  with  hate. 
She  said  much  less  than  Miss  Home,  who  walked  in  and 
out  of  the  shivery  furniture,  fanning  herself  in  her  agita- 
tion and  declaiming  against  Mr.  Dorward  at  the  top  of 
her  voice. 

"And  your  little  friends?"  Miss  Hobart  put  in  with  a 
smile  that  was  not  a  smile.  "We  thought  them  just  a 
little  badly  brought  up." 

"You  liked  them  very  much  at  first,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Yes,  one  often  likes  people  at  first." 

And  as  Sylvia  looked  at  her  she  realized  that  Miss 
Hobart  was  not  nearly  so  old  as  she  had  thought  her, 
perhaps  not  yet  fifty.  Still,  at  fifty  one  had  no  right  to 
be  jealous. 

"In  fact,"  said  Sylvia,  brutally,  "you  liked  them  very 
much  till  you  thought  Mr.  Dorward  liked  them  too." 

Miss  Hobart's  eyelids  almost  closed  over  her  eyes  and 
her  thin  lips  disappeared.  Miss  Home  stopped  in  her 
restless  parade  and,  pointing  with  her  fan  to  the  door,  bade 
Sylvia  be  gone  and  never  come  to  Sunny  Bank  again. 

"The  old  witch,"  thought  Sylvia,  when  she  was  toiling 
up  the  hill  to  Medworth  in  the  midsummer  heat.  "I 
believe  he's  right  and  that  she  is  the  devil." 

She  did  not  tell  Philip  about  her  quarrel,  because  she 
knew  that  he  would  have  reminded  her  one  by  one  of 
every  occasion  he  had  taken  to  warn  Sylvia  against  being 
friendly  with  any  inhabitant  of  Tintown.  A  week  or  two 
later,  Philip  announced  with  an  air  of  satisfaction  that  a 
van  of  Treacherites  had  arrived  in  Newton  Candover  and 
might  be  expected  at  Green  Lanes  next  Sunday. 

Sylvia  asked  what  on  earth  Treacherites  were,  and  he 
explained  that  they  were  the  followers  of  a  certain  Mr. 
John  Treacher,  who  regarded  himself  as  chosen  by  God 
to  purify  the  Church  of  England  of  popish  abuses. 


202  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"A  dreadful  little  cad,  I  believe,"  he  added.  "But  it 
will  be  fun  to  see  what  they  make  of  Dorward.  It's  a  pity 
the  old  ladies  have  been  kept  away  by  the  heat,  or  we 
might  have  a  free  fight." 

Sylvia  warned  Mr.  Dorward  of  the  Treacherites'  advent, 
and  he  seemed  rather  worried  by  the  news;  she  had  a 
notion  he  was  afraid  of  them,  which  made  her  impatient, 
as  she  frankly  told  him. 

"Not  many  of  us.  Not  many  of  us,"  said  Mr.  Dorward. 
"Hope  they  won't  try  to  break  up  the  church." 

The  Treacherites  arrived  on  Saturday  evening  and 
addressed  a  meeting  by  The  Old  Farm,  which  fetched 
Philip  out  into  the  road  with  threats  of  having  them  put 
in  jail  for  creating  a  disturbance. 

"If  you  want  to  annoy  people,  go  to  church  to-morrow 
and  annoy  the  vicar,"  he  said,  grimly. 

Sylvia,  who  had  heard  Philip's  last  remark,  turned  on 
him  in  a  rage:  "What  a  mean  and  cowardly  thing  to  say 
when  you  know  Mr.  Dorward  can't  defend  himself  as 
you  can.  Let  them  come  to  church  to-morrow  and  annoy 
the  vicar.  You  see  what  they'll  get." 

"Come,  come,  Sylvia,"  Philip  said,  with  an  attempt  at 
pacification  and  evidently  ashamed  of  himself.  "Let 
these  Christians  fight  it  out  among  themselves.  It's 
nothing  to  do  with  us,  as  long  as  they  don't  .  .  ." 

"Thank  you,  it's  everything  to  do  with  me,"  she  said. 
He  looked  at  her  in  surprise. 

Next  morning  Sylvia  took  up  her  position  in  the  front 
of  the  church  and  threatened  with  her  eye  the  larger 
congregation  that  had  gathered  in  the  hope  of  a  row  as 
fiercely  as  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Hobart  might  have  done. 
The  Treacherites  were  two  young  men  with  pimply  faces 
who  swaggered  into  church  and  talked  to  one  another 
loudly  before  the  service  began,  commenting  upon  the 
ornaments  with  cockney  facetiousness.  Cassandra  Batt 
came  over  to  Sylvia  and  whispered  hoarsely  in  her  ear 
that  she  was  afraid  there  would  be  trouble,  because  some 
of  the  village  lads  had  looked  in  for  a  bit  of  fun.  The 
service  was  carried  through  with  constant  interruptions, 
and  Sylvia  felt  her  heart  beating  faster  and  faster  with 
suppressed  rage.  When  it  was  over,  the  congregation  dis- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  203 

persed  into  the  churchyard,  where  the  yokels  hung  about 
waiting  for  the  vicar  to  come  out.  As  he  appeared  in  the 
west  door  a  loud  booing  was  set  up,  and  one  of  the  Trea- 
cherties  shouted: 

"Follow  me,  loyal  members  of  the  Protestant  Estab- 
lished Church,  and  destroy  the  idols  of  the  Pope."  Where- 
upon the  iconoclast  tried  to  push  past  Mr.  Dorward,  who 
was  fumbling  in  his  vague  way  with  the  lock  of  the  door. 
He  turned  white  with  rage  and,  seizing  the  Treacherite  by 
the  scruff  of  his  neck,  he  flung  him  head  over  heels  across 
two  mounds.  At  this  the  yokels  began  to  boo  more  vehe- 
mently, but  Mr.  Dorward  managed  to  shut  the  door  and 
lock  it,  after  which  he  walked  across  to  the  discomfited 
Treacherite  and,  holding  out  his  hand,  apologized  for  his 
violence.  The  yokels,  who  mistook  generosity  for  weak- 
ness, began  to  throw  stones  at  the  vicar,  one  of  which  cut 
his  face.  Sylvia,  who  had  been  standing  motionless  in  a 
trance  of  fury,  was  roused  by  the  blood  to  action.  With  a 
bound  she  sprang  at  the  first  Treacherite  and  pushed  him 
into  a  half-dug  grave;  then  turning  swiftly,  she  advanced 
against  his  companion  with  upraised  stick. 

fhe  youth  just  had  time  to  gasp  a  notification  to  the 
surrounding  witnesses  that  Sylvia  assaulted  him  first, 
before  he  ran;  but  the  yokels,  seeing  that  the  squire's  wife 
was  on  the  side  of  the  parson,  and  fearing  for  the  renewal 
of  their  leases  and  the  repairs  to  their  cottages,  turned 
round  upon  the  Treacherites  and  dragged  them  off  toward 
the  village  pond. 

"Come  on,  Cassandra,"  Sylvia  cried.  "Let's  go  and 
break  up  the  van." 

Cassandra  seized  her  pickax  and  followed  Sylvia,  who 
with  hair  streaming  over  her  shoulders  and  elation  in  her 
aspect  charged  past  The  Old  Farm  just  when  Philip  was 
coming  out  of  the  gate. 

"Come  on,  Philip!"  she  cried.  "Come  on  and  help  me 
break  up  their  damned  van." 

By  this  time  the  attack  had  brought  most  of  the  village 
out  of  doors.  Dogs  were  barking;  geese  and  ducks  were 
flapping  in  all  directions;  Sylvia  kept  turning  round  to 
urge  the  sexton,  whose  progress  was  hampered  by  a  petti- 
coat's slipping  down,  not  to  bother  about  her  clothes,  but 


2O4  Sylvia    Scarlett 

to  come  on.  A  grandnephew  of  the  old  woman  piciced  up 
the  crimson  garment  and,  as  he  pursued  his  grandaunt  to 
restore  it  to  her,  waved  it  in  the  air  like  a  standard.  The 
yokels,  who  saw  the  squire  watching  from  his  gate,  as- 
sumed his  complete  approval  of  what  was  passing  (as  a 
matter  of  fact  he  was  petrified  with  dismay),  and  paid  no 
attention  to  the  vicar's  efforts  to  rescue  the  Treacherites 
from  their  doom  in  the  fast-nearing  pond.  The  van  of  the 
iconoclasts  was  named  Ridley:  "By  God's  grace  we  have 
to-day  lit  such  a  candle  as  will  never  be  put  out"  was 
printed  on  one  side.  On  the  other  was  inscribed,  "John 
Treacher's  Poor  Preachers.  Supported  by  Voluntary 
Contributions."  By  the  time  Sylvia,  Cassandra,  and  the 
rest  had  finished  with  the  van  it  was  neither  legible  with- 
out nor  habitable  within. 

Naturally  there  was  a  violent  quarrel  between  Sylvia 
and  Philip  over  her  behavior,  a  quarrel  that  was  not 
mended  by  her  being  summoned  later  on  by  the  outraged 
Treacherites,  together  with  Mr.  Dorward  and  several 
yokels. 

"You've  made  a  fool  of  me  from  one  end  of  the  county 
to  the  other,"  Philip  told  her.  "Understand  once  and  for 
all  that  I  don't  intend  to  put  up  with  this  sort  of  thing." 

"It  was  your  fault,"  she  replied.  "You  began  it  by 
egging  on  these  brutes  to  attack  Mr.  Dorward.  You  could 
easily  have  averted  any  trouble  if  you'd  wanted  to.  It 
serves  you  jolly  well  right." 

"There's  no  excuse  for  your  conduct,"  Philip  insisted. 
'A  stranger  passing  through  the  village  would  have 
thought  a  lunatic  asylum  had  broken  loose." 

"Oh,  well,  it's  a  jolly  good  thing. to  break  loose  some- 
times— even  for  lunatics,"  Sylvia  retorted.  "If  you  could 
break  loose  yourself  sometimes  you'd  be  much  easier  to 
live  with." 

"The  next  time  you  feel  repressed,"  he  said,  "all  I  ask 
is  that  you'll  choose  a  place  where  we're  not  quite  so  well 
known  in  which  to  give  vent  to  your  feelings." 

The  argument  went  on  endlessly,  for  neither  Sylvia  nor 
Philip  would  yield  an  inch;  it  became,  indeed,  one  of  the 
eternal  disputes  that  reassert  themselves  at  the  least  excuse. 
If  Philip's  egg  were  not  cooked  long  enough,  the  cause 


Sylvia    Scarlett  205 

would  finally  be  referred  back  to  that  Sunday  morning; 
if  Sylvia  were  late  for  lunch,  her  unpunctuality  would  ulti- 
mately be  dated  from  the  arrival  of  the  Treacherites. 

Luckily  the  vicar,  with  whom  the  events  of  that  Sunday 
had  grown  into  a  comic  myth  that  was  continually  being 
added  to,  was  able  to  give  Sylvia  relief  from  Philip's  exag- 
gerated disapproval.  Moreover,  the  Treacherites  had 
done  him  a  service  by  advertising  his  church  and  bringing 
a  certain  number  of  strangers  there  every  Sunday  out  of 
curiosity;  these  pilgrims  inflated  the  natives  of  Green 
Lanes  with  a  sense  of  their  own  importance,  and  they 
now  filled  the  church,  taking  pride  and  pleasure  in  the 
ownership  of  an  attraction  and  boasting  to  the  natives  of 
the  villages  round  about  the  size  of  the  offertory.  Mr. 
Dorward's  popery  and  ritualism  were  admired  now  as 
commercial  smartness,  and  if  he  had  chosen  to  ride  into 
church  on  Palm  Sunday  or  any  other  Sunday  on  a  donkey 
(a  legendary  ceremony  invariably  attributed  to  High 
Church  vicars),  there  was  not  a  man,  woman,  or  child  in 
the  parish  of  Green  Lanes  that  would  not  have  given  a 
prod  of  encouragement  to  the  sacred  animal. 

One  hot  September  afternoon  Sylvia  was  walking  back 
from  Medworth  when  she  was  overtaken  by  Mr.  Pluepott 
in  his  cart.  They  stopped  to  exchange  the  usual  country 
greetings,  at  which  by  now  Sylvia  was  an  adept.  When 
presently  Mr.  Pluepott  invited  her  to  take  advantage  of  a 
lift  home  she  climbed  up  beside  him.  For  a  while  they 
jogged  along  in  silence;  suddenly  Mr.  Pluepott  delivered 
himself  of  what  was  evidently  much  upon  his  mind: 

"Mrs.  Iredale,"  he  began,  "you  and  me  has  known 
each  other  the  best  part  of  two  years,  and  your  coming  and 
having  a  cup  of  tea  with  Mrs.  Pluepott  once  or  twice  and 
Mrs.  Pluepott  having  a  big  opinion  of  you  makes  me  so 
bold." 

He  paused  and  reined  in  his  pony  to  a  walk  that  would 
suit  the  gravity  of  his  communication. 

"I'd  like  to  give  you  a  bit  of  a  warning  as  from  a  friend 
and,  with  all  due  respect,  an  admirer.  Being  a  married 
man  myself  and  you  a  young  lady,  you  won't  go  for  to 
mistake  my  meaning  when  I  says  to  you  right  out  that 
women  is  worse  than  the  devil.  Miss  Home!  As  I  jokingly 


2o6  Sylvia    Scarlett 

said  to  Mrs.  Pluepott,  though,  being  a  sacred  subject,  she 
wouldn't  laugh,  'Miss  Home!'  I  said.  'Miss  Horns! 
That's  what  she  ought  to  be  called.'  Mrs.  Iredale,"  he 
went  on,  pulling  up  the  pony  to  a  dead  stop  and  turning 
round  with  a  very  serious  countenance  to  Sylvia — "Mrs. 
Iredale,  you've  got  a  wicked,  bad  enemy  in  that  old 
woman." 

"I  know,"  she  agreed.  "We  quarreled  over  some- 
thing." 

"If  you  quarreled,  and  whether  it  was  your  fault  or 
whether  it  was  hers,  isn't  nothing  to  do  with  me,  but  the 
lies  she's  spreading  around  about  you  and  the  Reverend 
Dorward  beat  the  band.  I'm  not  speaking  gossip.  I'm 
not  going  by  hearsay.  I've  heard  her  myself,  and  Miss 
Hobart's  as  bad,  if  not  worse.  There,  now  I've  told  you 
and  I  hope  you'll  pardon  the  liberty,  but  I  couldn't  help 
it." 

With  which  Mr.  Pluepott  whipped  up  his  pony  to  a 
frantic  gallop,  and  very  soon  they  reached  the  outskirts  of 
Green  Lanes,  where  Sylvia  got  down. 

"Thanks,"  she  said,  offering  her  hand.  "I  don't  think 
I  need  bother  about  Miss  Home,  but  it  was  very  kind  of 
you  to  tell  me.  Thanks  very  much,"  and  with  a  wave  of 
her  stick  Sylvia  walked  pensively  along  into  the  village. 
As  she  passed  Mr.  Dorward's  cottage  she  rattled  her  stick 
on  his  gate  till  he  looked  out  from  a  window  in  the  thatch, 
like  a  bird  disturbed  on  its  nest. 

"Hullo,  old  owl!"  Sylvia  cried.  "Come  down  a  minute. 
I  want  to  say  something  to  you." 

The  vicar  presently  came  blinking  out  into  the  sunlight 
of  the  garden. 

"Look  here,"  she  said,  "do  you  know  that  those  two 
old  villains  in  Oaktown  are  spreading  it  about  that  you  and 
I  are  having  a  love-affair?  Haven't  you  got  a  prescription 
for  that  sort  of  thing  in  your  church  business  ?  Can't  you 
curse  them  with  bell,  book,  and  candle,  or  something? 
I'll  supply  the  bell,  if  you'll  supply  the  rest  of  the  parapher- 
nalia." 

Dorward  shook  his  head.  "Can't  be  done.  Cursing  is 
the  prerogative  of  bishops.  Not  on  the  best  terms  with 
my  bishop,  I'm  afraid.  Last  time  he  sent  for  me  I  had  to 


Sylvia    Scarlett  207 

spend  the  night  and  I  left  a  rosary  under  my  pillow.  He 
was  much  pained,  my  spies  at  the  Palace  tell  me." 

"Well,  if  you  don't  mind,  /  don't  mind,"  she  said.  "All 
right.  So  long." 

Three  days  later,  an  anonymous  post-card  was  sent  to 
Sylvia,  a  vulgar  Temptation  of  St.  Anthony;  and  a  week 
afterward  Philip  suddenly  flung  a  letter  down  before  her 
which  he  told  her  to  read.  It  was  an  ill-spelled  ungram- 
matical  screed,  which  purported  to  warn  Philip  of  his  wife's 
behavior,  enumerated  the  hours  she  had  spent  alone  with 
Dorward  either  in  his  cottage  or  in  the  church,  and  wound 
up  with  the  old  proverb  of  there  being  none  so  blind  as 
those  who  won't  see.  Sylvia  blushed  while  she  read  it,  not 
for  what  it  said  about  herself,  but  for  the  vile  impulse  that 
launched  this  smudged  and  scrabbled  impurity. 

"That's  a  jolly  thing  to  get  at  breakfast,"  Philip  said. 

"Beastly,"  she  agreed.  "And  your  showing  it  to  me 
puts  you  on  a  level  with  the  sender." 

"I  thought  it  would  be  a  good  lesson  for  you,"  he  said. 

"A  lesson?"  she  repeated. 

"Yes,  a  lesson  that  one  can't  behave  exactly  as  one 
likes,  particularly  in  the  country  among  a  lot  of  unedu- 
cated peasants." 

"But  I  don't  understand,"  Sylvia  went  on.  "Did  you 
show  me  this  filthy  piece  of  paper  with  the  idea  of  asking 
me  to  change  my  manner  of  life?" 

"I  showed  it  to  you  in  order  to  impress  upon  you  that 
people  talk,  and  that  you  owe  it  to  me  to  keep  their 
tongues  quiet." 

"What  do  you  want  me  to  do?" 

"Something  perfectly  simple,"  Philip  said.  "I  want 
you  to  give  up  visiting  Dorward  in  his  cottage  and,  as  you 
have  no  religious  inclinations,  I  should  like  you  to  avoid 
his  church." 

"And  that's  why  you  showed  me  this  anonymous 
letter?" 

He  nodded. 

"In  fact  you're  going  to  give  it  your  serious  attention?" 
she  continued. 

"Not  at  all,"  he  contradicted.  "For  a  long  time  I've 
objected  to  your  friendship  with  Dorward,  but,  knowing 

14 


208  Sylvia    Scarlett 

you  were  too  headstrong  to  listen  to  my  advice,  I  said 
nothing.  This  letter  makes  it  impossible  to  keep  silent 
any  longer  about  my  wishes." 

"But  you  don't  really  believe  that  Dorward  and  I  are 
having  an  affair?"  she  gasped. 

Philip  made  an  impatient  gesture. 

'What  a  foolish  question!  Do  you  suppose  that  if  I 
had  for  one  moment  thought  such  a  thing  I  shouldn't 
have  spoken  before?  No,  no,  my  dear,  it's  all  very  un- 
pleasant, but  you  must  see  that  as  soon  as  I  am  made 
aware,  however  crude  the  method  of  bringing  it  to  my 
knowledge,  that  people  are  talking  about  you  and  my 
vicar,  I  have  no  alternative  but  to  forbid  you  to  do  any- 
thing that  will  make  these  tongues  go  on  wagging." 

"To  forbid  me?"  she  repeated. 

Philip  bowed  ironically,  Sylvia  thought;  the  gesture, 
infinitely  slight  and  unimportant  as  it  was,  cut  the  last 
knot. 

"I  shall  have  to  tell  Mr.  Dorwara  about  this  letter  and 
explain  to  him,"  she  said. 

Philip  hesitated  for  a  moment.  "Yes,  I  think  that 
would  be  the  best  thing  to  do,"  he  agreed. 

Sylvia  regarded  him  curiously. 

"You  don't  mind  his  knowing  that  you  showed  it  to 
me?"  she  asked. 

"Not  at  all,"  said  Philip. 

She  laughed,  and  he  took  alarm  at  tne  tone. 

"I  thought  you  were  going  to  be  sensible,"  he  began, 
but  she  cut  him  short. 

"Oh,  I  am,  my  dear  man.    Don't  worry." 

Now  that  the  unpleasant  scene  was  over,  he  seemed 
anxious  for  her  sympathy. 

"I'm  sorry  this  miserable  business  nas  occurred,  but 
you  understand,  don't  you,  that  it's  been  just  as  bad  for 
me  as  for  you?" 

'Do  you  want  me  to  apologize?"  Sylvia  demanded,  in 
her  brutal  way. 

"No,  of  course  not.  Only  I  thougnt  perhaps  you  might 
have  shown  a  little  more  appreciation  of  my  feelings." 

"Ah,  Philip,  if  you  want  that,  you'll  have  to  let  me 
really  go  wrong  with  Dorward." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  209 

"Personally  I  consider  that  last  remark  of  yours  in  very 
bad  taste;  but  I  know  we  have  different  standards  of 
humor." 

Sylvia  found  Dorward  in  the  church,  engaged  in  an 
argument  with  Cassandra  about  the  arrangement  of  the 
chrysanthemums  for  Michaelmas. 

"I  will  not  have  them  like  this,"  he  was  saying. 

"But  we  always  putts  them  fan-shaped  like  that." 

"Take  them  away,"  he  shouted,  and,  since  Cassandra 
still  hesitated,  he  flung  the  flowers  all  over  the  church. 

The  short  conversation  that  followed  always  remained 
associated  in  Sylvia's  mind  with  Cassandra's  grunts  and 
her  large  base  elevated  above  the  pews,  while  she  browsed 
hither  and  thither,  bending  over  to  pick  up  the  scattered 
chrysanthemums. 

"Mr.  Dorward,  I  want  to  ask  you  something  very 
serious." 

He  looked  at  her  sharply,  almost  suspiciously. 

"Does  it  make  you  very  much  happier  to  have  faith?" 

"Yes,  yes,  yes,  yes,  yes,"  he  said,  brushing  petals  from 
his  cassock. 

"But  would  it  make  me?" 

"I  expect  so — I  expect  so,"  he  said,  still  brushing  and 
trying  with  that  shy  curtness  to  avoid  the  contact  of 
reality. 

"Well,  how  can  I  get  faith?" 

"You  must  pray,  dear  lady,  you  must  pray." 

"You'll  have  to  pray  for  me,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Always  do.  Always  pray  for  you.  Never  less  than 
three  prayers  every  day.  Mass  once  a  week." 

Sylvia  felt  a  lump  in  her  throat;  it  seemed  to  her  that 
this  friend,  accounted  mad  by  the  world,  had  paid  her  the 
tenderest  and  most  exquisite  courtesy  she  had  ever  known. 

"Come  along  now,  Cassandra,"  cried  the  vicar,  clapping 
his  hands  impatiently  to  cover  his  embarrassment.  "Where 
are  the  flowers  ?  Where  are  the  flowers,  you  miserable  old 
woman  ?" 

Cassandra  came  up  to  him,  breathing  heavily  with 
exertion.  "You  know,  Mr.  Dorward,  you're  enough  to 
try  the  patience  of  an  angel  on  a  tomb;  you  are  indeed." 

Sylvia  left  them  arguing  all  over  again  about  the  chrys- 


2io  Sylvia    Scarlett 

anthemums.    That  afternoon  she  went  away  from  Green 
Lanes  to  London. 

Three  months  later,  she  obtained  an  engagement  in  a 
musical  comedy  company  on  tour  and  sent  back  to  Philip 
the  last  shred  of  clothing  that  she  had  had  through  him, 
with  a  letter  and  ten  pounds  in  bank-notes: 

You  must  divorce  me  now.  I've  not  been  able  to  earn  enough  to  pay 
you  back  more  than  this  for  your  bad  bargain.  I  don't  think  I've  given 
any  more  pleasure  to  the  men  who  have  paid  less  for  me  than  you  did, 
if  that's  any  consolation. 

SYLVIA  SCARLETT. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

SYLVIA  stood  before  the  looking-glass  in  the  Birming- 
ham lodgings  and  made  a  speech  to  herself: 

"Humph!  You  look  older,  my  dear.  You  look 
more  than  nineteen  and  a  half.  You're  rather  glad, 
though,  aren't  you,  to  have  finished  with  the  last  three 
months  ?  You  feel  degraded,  don't  you  ?  What's  that  you 
say?  You  don't  feel  degraded  any  more  by  what  you've 
done  now  than  by  what  you  did  when  you  were  married? 
You  consider  the  net  result  of  the  last  three  months  has 
simply  been  to  prove  what  you'd  suspected  for  a  long 
time — the  wrong  you  did  yourself  in  marrying  Philip  Ire- 
dale?  Wait  a  minute;  don't  go  so  fast;  there's  something 
wrong  with  your  moral  sense.  You  know  perfectly  well 
your  contention  is  impossible;  or  do  you  accuse  every 
woman  who  marries  to  have  a  position  and  a  home  of 
being  a  prostitute?  Ah,  but  you  didn't  marry  Philip  for 
either  of  those  reasons,  you  say?  Yes,  you  did — you 
married  him  to  make  something  like  Arbour  End." 

Tears  welled  up  in  Sylvia's  eyes.  She  thought  she  had 
driven  Arbour  End  from  her  mind  forever. 

"Come,  come,  we  don't  want  any  tears.  What  are  you 
crying  for?  You  knew  when  you  left  Green  Lanes  that 
everything  which  had  come  into  your  life  through  Philip 
Iredale  must  be  given  up.  You  were  rather  proud  of  your 
ruthlessness.  Don't  spoil  it  now.  That's  right,  no  more 
tears.  You're  feeling  a  bit  abrutie,  aren't  you  ?  My  advice 
to  you  is  to  obliterate  the  last  three  months  from  your 
imagination.  I  quite  understand  that  you  suffered  a  good 
deal,  but  novices  must  be  prepared  to  suffer.  In  my 
opinion  you  can  congratulate  yourself  on  having  come 
through  so  easily.  Here  you  are,  a  jolly  little  cabetine  with 
a  complete  contempt  for  men.  You're  not  yet  twenty; 
you're  not  likely  to  fall  in  love,  for  you  must  admit  that 


212  Sylvia    Scarlett 

after  those  three  months  the  word  sounds  more  than 
usually  idiotic.  From  what  I've  seen  of  you  I  should  say 
that  for  the  future  you'll  be  very  well  able  to  look  after 
yourself;  you  might  even  become  a  famous  actress.  Ah, 
that  makes  you  smile,  eh?" 

Sylvia  dabbed  her  face  with  the  powder-puff  and  went 
down-stairs  to  dinner.  Her  two  companions  had  not  yet 
begun;  for  this  was  the  first  meal  at  which  they  would  all 
sit  down  together,  and  an  atmosphere  of  politeness  hung 
over  life  at  present.  Lily  Haden  and  Dorothy  Lonsdale 
had  joined  the  "Miss  Elsie  of  Chelsea"  company  at  the 
same  time  as  Sylvia,  and  were  making  their  first  appear- 
ance on  any  stage,  having  known  each  other  in  the  dullness 
of  West  Kensington.  For  a  fortnight  they  had  clung 
together,  but,  having  been  given  an  address  for  rooms  in 
Birmingham  that  required  a  third  person's  contribution, 
they  had  invited  Sylvia  to  join  them.  Lily  was  a  tall, 
slim  girl  with  very  fair,  golden  hair,  who  had  an  air  of 
romantic  mystery  that  was  due  to  indolence  of  mind  and 
body.  Dorothy  also  was  fair,  with  a  mass  of  light-brown 
hair,  a  perfect  complexion,  profile,  and  figure,  and,  what 
finally  gave  her  a  really  distinguished  beauty  in  such  a 
setting,  brown  eyes  instead  of  blue.  Lily's  languorous 
grace  of  manner  and  body  was  so  remarkable  that  in  a 
room  it  was  difficult  to  choose  between  her  and  Dorothy, 
but  behind  the  footlights  there  was  no  comparison;  there 
Dorothy  had  everybody's  glances,  and  Lily's  less  definite 
features  went  for  nothing. 

Each  girl  was  prompt  to  take  Sylvia  into  her  confidence 
about  the  other.  Thus  from  Lily  she  learned  that  Dor- 
othy's real  name  was  Norah  Caffyn;  that  she  was  the 
eldest  of  a  very  large  family;  that  Lily  had  known  her  at 
school;  that  she  had  been  engaged  to  a  journalist  who  was 
disapproved  of  by  her  family;  that  she  had  offered  to 
break  with  Wilfred  Curlew,  if  she  were  allowed  to  go  on 
the  stage;  and  that  she  had  taken  the  name  of  Lonsdale 
from  the  road  where  she  lived,  and  Dorothy  from  the 
sister  next  to  her. 

"I  suppose  in  the  same  way  as  she  used  to  take  her 
dolls?"  Sylvia  suggested. 

Lily  looked  embarrassed.     She  was  evidently  not  sure 


Sylvia    Scarlett  213 

whether  a  joke  was  intended,  and  when  Sylvia  encouraged 
her  to  suppose  it  was,  she  laughed  a  little  timidly,  being 
rather  doubtful  if  it  were  not  a  pun. 

"Her  sister  was  awfully  annoyed  about  it,  because  she 
hasn't  got  a  second  name.  She's  the  only  one  in  the  family 
who  hasn't/* 

Lily  also  told  Sylvia  something  about  herself,  how  her 
mother  had  lately  died  and  how  she  could  not  get  on  with 
her  sister,  who  had  married  an  actor  and  was  called  Doris. 
Her  mother  had  been  a  reciter,  and  there  had  always  been 
lots  of  theatrical  people  at  their  house,  so  it  had  been  easy 
for  her  to  get  an  introduction  to  Mr.  Walter  Keal,  who  had 
the  touring  rights  of  all  John  Richards's  great  Vanity 
Theater  productions. 

From  Dorothy  Sylvia  learned  that  she  had  known  Lily 
at  school,  but  not  for  long,  as  Mrs.  Haden  never  paid  her 
daughters*  fees;  that  Mr.  Haden  had  always  been  sup- 
posed to  live  in  Burmah,  but  that  people  who  knew  Mrs. 
Haden  declared  he  had  never  existed;  and  finally  that  Lily 
had  been  "awfully  nice"  to  herself  and  helped  her  to  get 
an  introduction  to  Mr.  Walter  Keal. 

The  association  of  Sylvia  with  the  two  girls  begun  at 
Birmingham  was  not  interrupted  until  the  end  of  the  tour. 
Lily  and  Dorothy  depended  upon  it,  Lily  because  Sylvia 
saved  her  the  trouble  of  thinking  for  herself,  Dorothy 
because  she  found  in  Sylvia  some  one  who  could  deflect  all 
the  difficulties  of  life  on  tour  and  leave  her  free  to  occupy 
herself  with  her  own  prosperity  and  her  own  comforts. 
Dorothy  possessed  a  selfishness  that  almost  attained  to 
the  dignity  of  ambition,  though  never  quite,  as  her  conceit 
would  not  allow  her  to  state  an  object  in  her  career,  for 
fear  of  failure;  her  method  was  invariably  to  seize  the  best 
of  any  situation  that  came  along,  whether  it  was  a  bed,  a 
chair,  a  potato,  or  a  man;  this  method  with  ordinary  good 
luck  would  insure  success  through  life.  Lily  was  too  lazy 
to  minister  to  Dorothy's  selfishness;  moreover,  she  often 
managed  in  taking  the  nearest  and  easiest  to  rob  Dorothy 
of  the  best. 

Sylvia  was  perfectly  aware  of  their  respective  characters, 
but  she  was  always  willing  to  give  herself  any  amount  of 
trouble  to  preserve  beauty  around  her;  Lily  and  Dorothy 


214  Sylvia    Scarlett 

were  not  really  more  troublesome  than  two  cats  would 
have  been;  in  fact,  rather  less,  because  at  any  rate  they 
could  carry  themselves,  if  not  their  bags. 

Life  on  tour  went  its  course  with  the  world  divided  into 
three  categories — the  members  of  the  company,  the  public 
expressing  its  personality  in  different  audiences,  and  for  the 
actors  saloon-bars  and  the  drinks  they  were  stood,  for  the 
actresses  admirers  and  the  presents  they  were  worth. 
Sometimes  when  the  saloon-bars  and  the  admirers  were 
alike  unprofitable,  the  members  of  the  company  mixed 
among  themselves  whether  in  a  walk  round  a  new  town  or 
at  tea  in  rooms  where  a  landlady  possessed  hospitable 
virtues.  Sylvia  had  a  special  gift  for  getting  the  best  out 
of  landladies,  and  the  men  of  the  company  came  more 
often  to  tea  with  herself  and  her  friends  than  with  the 
other  ladies.  They  came,  indeed,  too  often  to  please 
Dorothy,  who  disapproved  of  Lily's  easy-going  acceptance 
of  the  sort  of  love  that  is  made  because  at  the  moment 
there  is  nothing  else  to  do.  She  spoke  to  Sylvia  about  this, 
who  agreed  with  her,  but  thought  that  with  Lily  it  was 
inevitable. 

"But  not  with  boys  in  the  company,"  Dorothy  urged, 
disdainfully.  "It  makes  us  all  so  cheap.  I  don't  want  to 
put  on  side,  but,  after  all,  we  are  a  little  different  from  the 
other  girls." 

Sylvia  found  this  belief  universal  in  the  chorus.  She 
could  not  think  of  any  girl  who  had  not  at  one  time  or 
another  taken  her  aside  and  claimed  for  herself,  and  by 
the  politeness  owed  to  present  company  for  Sylvia,  this 
"little  difference." 

"Personally,"  Sylvia  said,  "I  think  we're  all  much  the 
same.  Some  of  us  drop  our  aitches,  others  our  p's  and  q's; 
some  of  us  sing  flat,  the  rest  sing  sharp;  and  we  all  look 
just  alike  when  we're  waiting  for  the  train  on  Sunday 
morning." 

Nevertheless,  with  all  her  prevision  of  a  fate  upon  Lily's 
conduct,  Sylvia  did  speak  to  her  about  the  way  in  which 
she  tolerated  the  familiarity  of  the  men  in  the  company. 

"I  suppose  you're  thinking  of  Tom,"  Lily  said. 

"Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry,"  Sylvia  put  in. 

"Well,  I  don't  like  to  seem  stuck  up,"  Lily  explained. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  215 

"Tom's  always  very  nice  about  carrying  my  bag  and 
getting  me  tea  when  we're  traveling." 

"If  I  promise  to  look  after  the  bag,"  Syivia  asked,  "will 
you  promise  to  discourage  Tom?" 

"But,  my  dear,  why  should  you  carry  my  bag  when  I 
can  get  Tom  to  do  it?" 

"It  bores  me  to  see  you  and  him  together,"  Sylvia  ex- 
plained. "These  boys  in  the  company  are  all  very  well, 
but  they  aren't  really  men  at  all." 

"I  know,"  Lily  said,  eagerly.  "That's  what  I  feel. 
They  don't  seem  real  to  me.  Of  course,  I  shouldn't  let 
anybody  make  love  to  me  seriously." 

"What  do  you  call  serious  love-making?" 

"Oh,  Sylvia,  how  you  do  go  on  asking  questions.  You 
know  perfectly  well  what  I  mean.  You  only  ask  questions 
to  make  me  feel  uncomfortable." 

"Just  as  I  might  disarrange  the  cushions  of  your 
chair?" 

"I  know  quite  well  who's  been  at  you  to  worry  me," 
Lily  went  on.  "I  know  it's  Dorothy.  She's  always  been 
used  to  being  the  eldest  and  finding  fault  with  everybody 
else.  She  doesn't  really  mind  Tom's  kissing  me — she's 
perfectly  ready  to  make  use  of  him  herself — but  she's 
always  thinking  about  other  people  and  she's  so  afraid  that 
some  of  the  men  she  goes  out  with  will  laugh  at  his  waist- 
coat. I'm  used  to  actors;  she  isn't.  I  never  bother  about 
her.  I  don't  complain  about  her  practising  her  singing  or 
talking  for  hours  and  hours  about  whether  I  think  she 
looks  better  with  a  teardrop  or  without.  Why  can't  she 
let  me  alone?  Nobody  ever  lets  me  alone.  It's  all  I've 
ever  asked  all  my  life." 

The  feeling  between  Lily  and  Dorothy  was  reaching  the 
point  of  tension.  Sylvia  commented  on  it  one  evening  to 
Fay  Onslow,  the  oldest  member  of  the  chorus,  a  fat  woman, 
wise  and  genial,  universally  known  as  Onzie  except  by  her 
best  boy  of  the  moment,  who  had  to  call  her  Fay.  How- 
ever, she  cost  him  very  little  else,  and  was  generally  con- 
sidered to  throw  herself  away,  though,  of  course,  as  her 
friends  never  failed  to  add,  she  was  getting  on  and  could 
no  longer  afford  to  be  too  particular. 

"Well,  between  you  and  I,  Sylvia,  I've  often  wondered 


2i6  Sylvia    Scarlett 

you've  kept  your  little  family  together  for  so  long.  I've 
been  on  the  stage  now  for  twenty-five  years.  I'm  not  far 
off  forty,  dear.  I  used  to  be  in  burlesque  at  the  old 
Frivolity." 

"Do  you  remember  Victoria  Deane?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Of  course  I  do.  She  made  a  big  hit  and  then  got 
married  and  left  the  stage.  A  sweetly  pretty  little  thing, 
she  was.  But,  as  I  was  saying,  dear,  in  all  my  experience  I 
never  knew  two  fair  girls  get  through  a  tour  together  with- 
out falling  out,  two  girls  naturally  fair,  that  is,  and  you 
mark  my  words,  Lily  Haden  and  Dolly  Lonsdale  will  have 
a  row." 

Sylvia  was  anxious  to  avert  this,  because  she  would  have 
found  it  hard  to  choose  between  their  rival  claims  upon 
her.  She  was  fonder  of  Lily,  but  she  was  very  fond  of 
Dorothy,  and  she  believed  that  Dorothy  might  attain  real 
success  in  her  profession.  It  seemed  more  worth  while  to 
take  trouble  over  Dorothy;  yet  something  warned  her 
that  an  expense  of  devotion  in  that  direction  would  ulti- 
mately be,  from  a  selfish  point  of  view,  wasted.  Dorothy 
would  never  consider  affection  where  advancement  was 
concerned;  yet  was  it  not  just  this  quality  in  her  that  she 
admired?  There  would  certainly  be  an  unusual  exhilara- 
tion in  standing  behind  Dorothy  and  helping  her  to  rise 
and  rise,  whereas  with  Lily  the  best  that  could  be  expected 
was  to  prevent  her  falling  infinitely  low. 

"How  I've  changed  since  I  left  Philip,"  she  said  to  her- 
self. "I  seem  to  have  lost  myself  somehow  and  to  have 
transferred  all  my  interest  in  life  to  other  people.  I  sup- 
pose it  won't  last.  God  forbid  I  should  become  a  problem 
to  myself  like  a  woman  in  a  damned  novel.  Down  with 
introspection,  though,  Heaven  knows,  observation  in 
'Miss  Elsie  of  Chelsea'  is  not  a  profitable  pastime." 

Sylvia  bought  an  eye-glass  next  day,  and  though  all 
agreed  with  one  another  in  private  that  it  was  an  affecta- 
tion, everybody  assured  her  that  she  was  a  girl  who  could 
wear  an  eye-glass  with  advantage.  Lily  thought  the  cord 
must  be  rather  a  bore. 

"It's  symbolic,"  Sylvia  declared  to  the  dressing-room. 

"I  think  I'll  have  my  eyes  looked  at  in  Sheffield,"  said 
Onzie.  "There's  a  doctor  there  who's  very  good  to  pros. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  217 

I  often  feel  my  eyes  are  getting  a  bit  funny.  It  may  be  the 
same  as  Sylvia's  got." 

The  tour  was  coming  to  an  end;  the  last  three  nights 
would  be  played  at  Oxford,  to  which  everybody  looked 
forward.  All  the  girls  who  had  been  to  Oxford  before  told 
wonderful  tales  of  the  pleasures  that  might  be  anticipated. 
Even  some  of  the  men  were  heard  to  speculate  if  such  or 
such  a  friend  were  still  there,  which  annoyed  those  who 
could  not  even  boast  of  having  had  a  friend  there  two  years 
ago.  The  jealous  ones  revenged  themselves  by  criticizing 
the  theatrical  manners  of  the  undergraduate,  especially 
upon  the  last  night  of  a  musical  comedy.  One  heard  a  great 
deal  of  talk,  they  said,  about  a  college  career,  but  personal- 
ly and  without  offense  to  anybody  present  who  had  friends 
at  college,  they  considered  that  a  college  career  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten  meant  rowdiness  and  a  habit  of  thinking 
oneself  better  than  other  people. 

Sylvia,  Lily,  and  Dorothy  had  rooms  in  Eden  Square, 
which  wras  the  recognized  domain  of  theatrical  companies 
playing  in  Oxford.  Numerous  invitations  to  lunch  and  tea 
were  received,  and  Sylvia,  who  had  formed  a  preconceived 
idea  of  Oxford  based  upon  Philip,  was  astonished  how  little 
the  undergraduates  she  met  resembled  him.  Dorothy 
managed  with  her  usual  instinct  for  the  best  to  secure  as 
an  admirer  Lord  Clarehaven,  or,  as  the  other  girls  pre- 
ferred to  call  him  with  a  nicer  formality,  the  Earl  of  Clare- 
haven.  He  invited  her  with  a  friend  to  lunch  at  Christ 
Church  on  the  last  day.  Dorothy  naturally  chose  Sylvia, 
and,  as  Lily  was  already  engaged  elsewhere,  Sylvia  ac- 
cepted. Later  in  the  afternoon  Dorothy  proposed  that  the 
young  men  should  come  back  and  have  tea  in  Eden  Square, 
and  Sylvia  divined  Dorothy's  intention  of  proving  to 
these  young  men  that  the  actress  in  her  own  home  would 
be  as  capable  of  maintaining  propriety  as  she  had  been  at 
lunch. 

"We'll  buy  the  cakes  on  the  way,"  said  Dorothy,  which 
was  another  example  of  her  infallible  instinct  for  the  best 
and  the  most  economical. 

Loaded  with  eclairs,  meringues,  and  chocolates,  Dorothy, 
Sylvia,  and  their  four  guests  reached  Eden  Square. 

"You'll  have  to  excuse  the  general  untidiness,"  Dorothy 


±i8  Sylvia    Scarlett 

said,  with  an  affected  little  laugh,  flinging  open  the  door 
of  the  sitting-room.  She  would  probably  have  chosen 
another  word  for  the  picture  of  Lily  sitting  on  Tom's  knee 
in  the  worn  leather-backed  arm-chair  if  she  had  entered 
first:  unfortunately,  Lord  Clarehaven  was  accorded  that 
privilege,  and  the  damage  was  done.  Sylvia  quickly  intro- 
duced everybody,  and  nobody  could  have  complained  of 
the  way  in  which  the  undergraduates  sailed  over  an 
awkward  situation,  nor  could  much  have  been  urged 
against  Tom,  for  he  left  immediately.  As  for  Lily,  she  was 
a  great  success  with  the  young  men  and  seemed  quite 
undisturbed  by  the  turn  of  events. 

As  soon  as  the  three  girls  were  alone  together,  Dorothy 
broke  out: 

"I  hope  you  don't  think  I'll  ever  live  with  you  again 
after  that  disgusting  exhibition.  I  suppose  you  think  just 
because  you  gave  me  an  introduction  that  you  can  do  what 
you  like.  I  don't  know  what  Sylvia  thinks  of  you,  but  I 
can  tell  you  what  I  think.  You  make  me  feel  absolutely 
sick.  That  beastly  chorus-boy!  The  idea  of  letting  any- 
body like  that  even  look  at  you.  Thank  Heaven,  the  tour's 
over.  I'm  going  down  to  the  theater.  I  can't  stay  in  this 
room.  It  makes  me  blush  to  think  of  it.  I'll  take  jolly 
good  care  who  I  live  with  in  future." 

Then  suddenly,  to  Sylvia's  immense  astonishment, 
Dorothy  slapped  Lily's  face.  What  torments  of  mortifica- 
tion must  be  raging  in  that  small  soul  to  provoke  such  an 
unlady-like  outburst! 

"I  should  hit  her  back  if  I  were  you,  my  lass,"  Sylvia 
advised,  putting  up  her  eye-glass  for  the  fray;  but  Lily 
began  to  cry  and  Dorothy  flounced  out  of  the  room. 

Sylvia  bent  over  her  in  consolation,  though  her  sense  of 
justice  made  her  partly  excuse  Dorothy's  rage. 

"How  did  I  know  she  would  bring  her  beastly  men  back 
to  tea?  She  only  did  it  to  brag  about  having  a  lord  to  our 
digs.  After  all,  they're  just  as  much  mine  as  hers.  I  was 
sorry  for  Tom.  He  doesn't  know  anybody  in  Oxford,  and 
he  felt  out  of  it  with  all  the  other  boys  going  out.  He 
asked  me  if  I  was  going  to  turn  him  down  because  I'd  got 
such  fine  friends.  I  was  sorry  for  him,  Sylvia,  and  so  I 
asked  him  to  tea.  I  don't  see  why  Dorothy  should  turn 


Sylvia    Scarlett  219 

round  and  say  nasty  things  to  me.  I've  always  been  decent 
to  her.  Oh,  Sylvia,  you  don't  know  how  lonely  I  feel 
sometimes." 

This  appeal  was  too  much  for  Sylvia,  who  clasped 
Lily  to  her  and  let  her  sob  forth  her  griefs  upon  her 
shoulder. 

"Sylvia,  I've  got  nobody.  I  hate  my  sister  Doris. 
Mother's  dead.  Everybody  ran  her  down,  but  she  had  a 
terrible  life.  Father  used  to  take  drugs,  and  then  he  stole 
and  was  put  in  prison.  People  used  to  say  mother  wasn't 
married,  but  she  was.  Only  the  truth  was  so  terrible,  she 
could  never  explain.  You  don't  know  how  she  worked. 
She  brought  up  Doris  and  me  entirely.  She  used  to  recite, 
and  she  used  to  be  always  hard  up.  She  died  of  heart 
failure,  and  that  comes  from  worry.  Nobody  understands 
me.  I  don't  know  what  will  become  of  me." 

"My  dear,"  Sylvia  said,  "you  know  I'm  your  pal." 

"Oh,  Sylvia,,  you're  a  darling!  I'd  do  anything  for 
you." 

"Even  carry  your  own  bag  at  the  station  to-morrow?" 

"No,  don't  tease  me,"  Lily  begged.  "If  you  won't 
tease  me,  I'll  do  anything." 

That  evening  Mr.  Keal,  with  the  mighty  Mr.  Richards 
himself,  came  up  from  London  to  see  the  show.  The 
members  of  the  chorus  were  much  agitated.  It  could  only 
mean  that  girls  were  to  be  chosen  for  the  Vanity  produc- 
tion in  the  autumn.  Every  one  of  them  put  on  rather 
more  make-up  than  usual,  acted  hard  all  the  time  she  was 
on  the  stage,  and  tried  to  study  Mr.  Richards's  face  from 
the  wings. 

"You  and  I  are  one  of  the  'also  rans,'"  Sylvia  told  Lily. 
"The  great  man  eyed  me  with  positive  dislike." 

In  the  end  it  was  Dorothy  Lonsdale  who  was  engaged 
for  the  Vanity:  she  was  so  much  elated  that  she  was 
reconciled  with  Lily  and  told  everybody  in  the  dressing- 
room  that  she  had  met  a  cousin  at  Oxford,  Arthur  Lons- 
dale, Lord  Cleveden's  son. 

"Which  side  of  the  road  are  you  related  to  him?" 
Sylvia  asked.  Dorothy  blushed,  but  she  pretended  not  to 
understand  what  Sylvia  meant,  and  said  quite  calmly  that 
it  was  on  her  mother's  side.  She  parted  with  Sylvia  and 


220  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Lily  very  cordially  at  Paddington,  but  she  did  not  invite 
either  of  them  to  come  and  see  her  at  Lonsdale  Road. 

Sylvia  and  Lily  stayed  together  at  Mrs.  Gowndry's  in 
Finborough  Road,  for  it  happened  that  the  final  negotia- 
tions for  Sylvia's  divorce  from  Philip  were  being  concluded 
and  she  took  pleasure  in  addressing  her  communications 
from  the  house  where  she  had  been  living  when  he  first 
met  her.  Philipwas  very  anxious  to  make  her  an  allowance, 
but  she  declined  it;  her  case  was  undefended.  Lily  and 
she  managed  to  get  an  engagement  in  another  touring 
company,  which  opened  in  August  somewhere  on  the  south 
coast.  About  this  time  Sylvia  read  in  a  paper  that  Jimmy 
Monkley  had  been  sentenced  to  three  years'  penal  servi- 
tude for  fraud,  and  by  an  odd  coincidence  in  the  same  paper 
she  read  of  the  decree  nisi  made  absolute  that  set  Philip 
and  herself  free.  Old  associations  seemed  to  be  getting 
wound  up.  Unfortunately,  the  new  ones  were  not  prom- 
ising; no  duller  collection  of  people  had  surely  ever  been 
gathered  together  than  the  company  in  which  she  was 
working  at  present.  Not  only  was  the  company  tire- 
some, but  Sylvia  and  Lily  failed  to  meet  anywhere  on 
the  tour  one  amusing  person.  To  be  sure,  Lily  thought 
that  Sylvia  was  too  critical,  and  therefore  so  alarming 
that  several  "nice  boys"  were  discouraged  too  early  in 
their  acquaintanceship  for  a  final  judgment  to  be  passed 
upon  them. 

"The  trouble  is,"  said  Sylvia,  "that  at  this  rate  we  shall 
never  make  our  fortunes.  I  stipulate  that,  if  we  adopt  a 
gay  life,  it  really  will  be  a  gay  life.  I  don't  want  to  have 
soul-spasms  and  internal  wrestles  merely  for  the  sake  of 
being  bored." 

Sylvia  tried  to  produce  Lily  as  a  dancer;  for  a  week  or 
two  they  worked  hard  at  imitations  of  the  classical  school, 
but  very  soon  they  both  grew  tired  of  it. 

"The  nearest  we  shall  ever  get  to  jingling  our  money  at 
this  game,"  Sylvia  said,  "is  jingling  our  landlady's  orna- 
ments on  the  mantelpiece.  Lily,  I  think  we're  not  meant 
for  the  stage.  And  yet,  if  I  could  only  find  my  line,  I 
believe  ...  I  believe  .  .  .  Oh,  well,  I  can't,  and  so 
there's  an  end  of  it.  But  look  here,  winter's  coming  on. 
We've  got  nothing  to  wear.  We  haven't  saved  a  penny. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  221 

Ruin  stares  us  in  the  face.  Say  something,  Lily;  do  say 
something,  or  I  shall  scream." 

"I  don't  think  we  ought  to  have  eaten  those  plums  at 
dinner.  They  weren't  really  ripe,"  Lily  said. 

"Well,  anyhow,  that  solves  the  problem  of  the  moment. 
Put  your  things  on.  You'd  better  come  out  and  walk 
them  off." 

They  were  playing  in  Eastbourne  that  week,  where  a 
sudden  hot  spell  had  prolonged  the  season  farther  into 
September  than  usual;  a  new  company  of  entertainers 
known  as  "The  Highwaymen"  was  attracting  audiences 
almost  as  large  as  in  the  prime  of  summer.  Sylvia  and  Lily 
paused  to  watch  them  from  the  tamarisks  below  the 
Marina. 

Suddenly  Sylvia  gave  an  exclamation. 

"I  do  believe  that's  Claude  Raglan  who's  singing  now. 
Do  you  remember,  Lily,  I  told  you  about  the  Pink  Pier- 
rots? I'm  sure  it  is." 

Presently  the  singer  came  round  with  the  bag  and  a 
packet  of  his  picture  post-cards.  Sylvia  asked  if  he  had  a 
photograph  of  Claude  Raglan.  When  he  produced  one 
she  dug  him  in  the  ribs,  and  cried: 

"Claudie,  you  consumptive  ass,  don't  you  recognize 
me?  Sylvia." 

He  was  delighted  to  see  her  again,  and  willingly  accepted 
an  invitation  to  supper  after  the  show,  if  he  might  bring  a 
friend  with  him. 

"Jack  Airdale — an  awfully  decent  fellow.  Quite  a  good 
voice,  too,  though  I  think  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
show  it's  a  mistake  to  have  a  high  barytone  when  they've 
already  got  a  tenor.  However,  he  does  a  good  deal  of 
accompanying.  In  fact,  he's  a  much  better  accompanist 
than  he  is  singer." 

"I  suppose  you've  got  more  girls  than  ever  in  love  with 
you,  now  you  wear  a  mask?"  said  Sylvia. 

Claude  seemed  doubtful  whether  to  take  this  remark  as 
a  compliment  to  his  voice  or  as  an  insult  to  his  face. 
Finally  he  took  it  as  a  joke  and  laughed. 

"Just  the  same,  I  see,"  he  said.  "Always  chaffing  a 
fellow." 

Claude  Raglan  and  Jack  Airdale  came  to  supper  in  due 


222  Sylvia    Scarlett 

course.  Sylvia  liked  Jack;  he  was  a  round-faced  young  man 
in  the  early  twenties,  with  longish  light  hair  that  flopped 
all  over  his  face  when  he  became  excited.  Sylvia  and  he 
were  good  friends  immediately  and  made  a  great  deal  of 
noise  over  supper,  while  Claude  and  Lily  looked  at  each 
other. 

"How's  the  consumption,  Claudie?"  Sylvia  asked. 

Claude  sighed  with  a  soulful  glance  at  Lily's  delicate  form. 

"Don't  imagine  she's  sympathizing  with  you,"  Sylvia 
cried.  "She's  only  thinking  about  plums." 

"He's  grown  out  of  it,"  Airdale  said.  "Look  at  the 
length  of  his  neck." 

"I  have  to  wear  these  high  collars.  My  throat  .  .  ." 
Claude  began. 

"Oh,  shut  up  with  your  ailments,"  Sylvia  interrupted. 

" Hear,  hear,"  Airdale  shouted.  "  Down  with  ailments," 
and  he  threw  a  cushion  at  Claude. 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  behave  like  a  clown,"  said  Claude, 
smoothing  his  ruffled  hair  and  looking  to  see  if  Lily  was 
joining  in  the  laugh  against  him. 

Presently  the  conversation  turned  upon  the  prospects 
of  the  two  girls  for  next  winter,  about  which  Sylvia  was 
very  pessimistic. 

"Why  don't  we  join  together  and  run  a  street  show — 
Pierrot,  Pierrette,  Harlequin,  and  Columbine?"  Airdale 
suggested.  "I'll  swear  there's  money  in  it." 

"About  enough  to  pay  for  our  coffins,"  said  Claude. 
"Sing  out  of  doors  in  the  winter?  My  dear  Jack,  you're 
mad." 

Sylvia  thought  the  idea  was  splendid,  and  had  sketched 
out  Lily's  Columbine  dress  before  Lily  herself  had  realized 
that  the  conversation  had  taken  a  twist. 

"Light-blue  crepe  de  Chine  with  bunches  of  cornflowers 
for  Columbine.  Pierrette  in  dark  blue  with  bunches  of 
forget-me-nots,  Pierrot  in  light  blue.  Silver  and  dark-blue 
lozenges  for  Harlequin." 

"Paregoric  lozenges  would  suit  Claude  better,"  said 
Airdale.  "O  Pagliacci!  Can't  you  hear  him?  No,  joking 
apart,  I  think  it  would  be  a  great  effort.  We  sha'n't  have 
to  sing  much  outside.  We  shall  get  invited  into  people's 
houses." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  223 

"Shall  we?"  Claude  muttered. 

"And  if  the  show  goes/*  Airdale  went  on,  "we  might 
vary  our  costumes.  For  instance,  we  might  be  Bacchanals 
in  pink  fleshings  and  vine  leaves." 

"Vine  leaves,"  Claude  ejaculated.  "Vine  Street  more 
likely." 

"Don't  laugh,  old  boy,  with  that  lung  of  yours,"  said 
Airdale,  earnestly. 

In  the  end,  before  the  company  left  Eastbourne,  it  was 
decided,  notwithstanding  Claude's  lugubrious  prophecies, 
to  launch  the  enterprise;  when  the  tour  broke  up  in 
December  Sylvia  had  made  dresses  both  for  Lily  and  for 
herself  as  she  had  first  planned  them  with  an  eye  only  for 
what  became  Lily.  Claude's  hypochondria  was  appeased 
by  letting  him  wear  a  big  patchwork  cloak  over  his  harle- 
quin's dress  in  which  white  lozenges  had  been  substituted 
for  silver  ones,  owing  to  lack  of  money.  They  hired  a 
small  piano  very  much  like  the  one  that  belonged  to  the 
Pink  Pierrots,  and  on  Christmas  Eve  they  set  out  from 
Finborough  Road,  where  Claude  and  Jack  had  rooms  near 
Mrs.  Gowndry's.  They  came  into  collision  with  a  party 
of  carol-singers  who  seemed  to  resent  their  profane  compe- 
tition, and,  much  to  Jack  Airdale's  disappointment,  they 
were  not  invited  into  a  single  house;  the  money  taken 
after  three  hours  of  wandering  music  was  one  shilling  and 
fivepence  in  coppers. 

"Never  mind,"  said  Jack.  "We  aren't  known  yet.  It's 
a  pity  we  didn't  start  singing  last  Christmas  Eve.  We 
should  have  had  more  engagements  than  we  should  have 
known  what  to  do  with  this  year." 

"We  must  build  up  the  show  for  next  year,"  Sylvia 
agreed,  enthusiastically. 

"I  shall  sing  the  'Lost  Chord'  next  year,"  Claude  an- 
swered. "They  may  let  me  in,  if  I  worry  them  outside 
heaven's  gates,  to  hear  that  last  Amen." 

Jack  and  Sylvia  were  justified  in  their  optimism,  for 
gradually  the  Carnival  Quartet,  as  they  called  themselves, 
became  known  in  South  Kensington,  and  they  began  to 
get  engagements  to  appear  in  other  parts  of  London.  Jack 
taught  Sylvia  to  vamp  well  enough  on  the  guitar  to  accom- 
pany herself  in  duets  with  him;  Claude  looked  handsome 

15 


224  Sylvia    Scarlett 

in  his  harlequin's  dress,  which  prosperity  had  at  last  en- 
dowed with  silver  lozenges;  Lily  danced  actively  enough 
for  the  drawing-rooms  in  which  they  performed;  Sylvia, 
inspired  by  the  romantic  exterior  of  herself  and  her  com- 
panions, invented  a  mime  to  the  music  of  Schumann's 
"Carnival"  which  Jack  Airdale  played,  or,  as  Claude  said, 
maltreated. 

The  Quartet  showed  signs  of  increasing  vitality  with 
the  approach  of  spring,  and  there  was  no  need  to  think  any 
more  of  touring  in  musical  comedy,  which  was  a  relief  to 
Sylvia.  When  summer  came,  they  agreed  to  keep  together 
and  work  the  South  Coast. 

However,  all  these  plans  came  suddenly  to  nothing, 
because  one  misty  night  early  in  March  Harlequin  and 
Columbine  lost  Pierrot  and  Pierrette  on  the  way  home 
from  a  party  in  Chelsea;  a  brief  note  from  Harlequin  to 
Pierrot,  which  he  found  when  he  got  home,  indicated  that 
the  loss  should  be  considered  permanent. 

This  treachery  was  a  shock  to  Sylvia,  and  she  was  horri- 
fied at  herself  for  feeling  it  so  deeply.  Ever  since  that  day 
in  Oxford  when  Lily  had  sobbed  out  her  griefs,  Sylvia  had 
concentrated  upon  her  all  the  capacity  for  affection  which 
had  begun  to  blossom  during  the  time  she  was  with  Philip 
and  which  had  been  cut  off  ruthlessly  with  everything  else 
that  belonged  to  life  with  him.  She  knew  that  she  should 
have  foreseen  the  possibility,  nay  the  probability,  of  this 
happening,  but  she  had  charmed  herself  with  the  romantic 
setting  of  their  musical  adventure  and  let  all  else  go. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry,  Sylvia,"  said  Jack;  "I  ought  to  have 
kept  a  better  lookout  on  Claude." 

"It's  not  your  fault,  old  son.  But,  O  God!  why  can't 
four  people  stay  friends  without  muddling  everything  up 
with  this  accursed  love?" 

Jack  was  sympathetic,  but  it  was  useless  to  confide  in 
him  her  feeling  for  Lily;  he  would  never  understand.  She 
would  seem  to  him  so  little  worth  while;  for  him  the 
behavior  of  such  a  one  meant  less  than  the  breaking  of  a 
porcelain  figure. 

"It  did  seem  worth  while,"  Sylvia  said  to  herself,  that 
night,  "to  keep  that  frail  and  lovely  thing  from  this.  It 
was  my  fault,  of  course,  for  I  knew  both  Lily  and  Claude 


Sylvia    Scarlett  225 

through  and  through.  Yet  what  does  it  matter?  What  a 
fool  I  am.  It  was  absurd  of  me  to  imagine  we  could  go  on 
forever  as  we  were.  I  don't  really  mind  about  Lily;  I'm 
angry  because  my  conceit  has  been  wounded.  It  serves 
me  right.  But  that  dirty  little  actor  won't  appreciate  her. 
He's  probably  sick  of  her  easiness  already.  Oh,  why  the 
hell  am  I  not  a  man?" 

Presently,  however,  Sylvia's  mood  of  indignation  burned 
itself  out;  she  began  to  attribute  the  elopement  of  Claude 
and  Lily  to  the  characters  they  had  assumed  of  Harlequin 
and  Columbine,  and  to  regard  the  whole  affair  as  a  scene 
from  a  play  which  must  not  be  taken  more  deeply  to  heart 
than  with  the  pensive  melancholy  that  succeeds  the  fall  of 
the  curtain  on  mimic  emotions.  After  all,  what  had  Lily 
been  to  her  more  than  a  puppet  whose  actions  she  had 
always  controlled  for  her  pleasure  until  she  was  stolen  from 
her?  Without  Lily  she  was  once  more  at  a  loose  end; 
there  was  the  whole  history  of  her  sorrow. 

"I  can't  think  what  they  wanted  to  run  away  for,*'  said 
Jack.  Sylvia  fancied  the  flight  was  the  compliment  both 
Harlequin  and  Columbine  had  paid  to  her  authority. 

"I  don't  find  you  so  alarming,"  he  said. 

"No,  old  son,  because  you  and  I  have  always  regarded 
the  Quartet  from  a  strictly  professional  point  of  view,  and 
consequently  each  other.  Meanwhile  the  poor  old  Quartet 
is  done  in.  We  two  can't  sustain  a  program  alone." 

Airdale  gloomily  assented,  but  thought  it  would  be  well 
to  continue  for  a  week  or  so,  in  case  Claude  and  Lily  came 
back. 

"I  notice  you  take  it  for  granted  that  I'll  be  willing  to 
continue  busking  with  them,"  Sylvia  said. 

That  evening  Airdale  and  she  went  out  as  usual;  but 
the  loss  of  the  other  two  seemed  somehow  to  have  robbed 
the  entertainment  of  its  romantic  distinction,  and  Sylvia 
was  dismayed  to  find  with  what  a  shameful  timidity  she 
now  took  herself  and  her  guitar  into  saloon-bars;  she  felt 
like  a  beggar  and  was  humiliated  by  Jack's  apologetic 
manner,  and  still  more  by  her  own  instinctive  support  of 
such  cringing  to  the  benevolence  of  potmen  and  barmaids. 

One  evening,  after  about  a  week  of  these  distasteful 
peregrinations,  the  two  mountebanks  came  out  of  a  public 


226  Sylvia    Scarlett 

house  in  Fulham  Road  where  they  had  been  forced  to 
endure  a  more  than  usually  intolerable  patronage.  Sylvia 
vowed  she  would  not  perform  again  under  such  conditions, 
and  they  turned  up  Tinderbox  Lane  to  wander  home. 
This  thoroughfare,  only  used  by  pedestrians,  was  very 
still,  and  trees  planted  down  the  middle  of  the  pav  ment 
gave  to  the  mild  March  evening  an  effluence  of  spring. 
Sylvia  began  to  strum  upon  her  guitar  the  tune  that 
Arthur  Madden  and  she  sang  together  from  the  windows 
at  Hampstead  on  the  night  she  met  him  first;  her  com- 
panion soon  caught  hold  of  the  air,  and  they  strolled  slowly 
along,  dreaming,  she  looking  downward  of  the  past,  he  of 
the  future  with  his  eyes  fixed  on  the  chimneys  of  the  high 
flats  that  encircled  the  little  houses  and  long  gardens  of 
Tinderbox  Lane.  They  were  passing  a  wall  on  their  right 
in  which  numbered  doors  were  set  at  intervals.  From  one 
of  these  a  tall  figure  emerged  and  stopped  a  moment  to  say 
good-by  to  somebody  standing  in  the  entrance.  The  two 
musicians  with  a  simultaneous  instinct  for  an  audience 
that  might  appreciate  them  stopped  and  addressed  their 
song  to  the  parting  pair,  a  tall  old  gentleman  with  droop- 
ing gray  whiskers,  very  much  muffled  up,  and  an  exceed- 
ingly stout  woman  of  ripe  middle  age. 

"Bravo!"  said  the  old  gentleman,  in  a  tremulous  voice, 
as  he  tapped  his  cane  on  the  pavement.  "Polly,  this  is 
devilish  appropriate.  By  gad!  it  makes  me  feel  inclined 
to  dance  again,  Polly,"  and  the  old  gentleman  forthwith 
postured  with  his  thin  legs  like  a  cardboard  antic  at  the 
end  of  a  string.  The  fat  woman  standing  in  the  doorway 
came  out  into  the  lamplight,  and  clasping  her  hands  in 
alarm,  begged  him  not  to  take  cold,  but  the  old  gentleman 
would  not  stop  until  Polly  had  made  a  pretense  of  dancing 
a  few  steps  with  him,  after  which  he  again  piped,  "Bravo," 
vowed  he  must  have  a  whisky,  and  invited  Sylvia  and  Jack 
to  come  inside  and  join  them. 

"Dashwood  is  my  name,  Major-General  Dashwood.  and 
this  is  Mrs.  Gainsborough." 

"Come  along,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "The  cap- 
tain—" 

"She  will  call  me  Captain,"  said  the  general,  with  a 
chuckle.  "Obstinate  gal!  Knew  me  first  when  I  was  a 


Sylvia    Scarlett  227 

captain,  thirty-six  years  ago,  and  has  never  called  me  any- 
thing since.  What  a  woman,  though!" 

"He's  very  gay  to-night.  We've  been  celebrating  our 
anniversary,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  explained,  while  the  four 
of  them  walked  along  a  gravel  path  toward  a  small  square 
creeper-covered  house  at  the  end  of  a  very  long  garden. 

"We  met  first  at  the  Argyll  Rooms  in  March,  1867,  and 
in  September,  1869,  Mulberry  Cottage  was  finished.  I 
planted  those  mulberry-trees  myself,  and  they'll  outlive  us 
both,"  said  the  general. 

"Now  don't  let's  have  any  more  dismals,"  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough begged.  "We've  had  quite  enough  to-night, 
talking  over  old  times." 

Mulberry  Cottage  was  very  comfortable  inside,  full  of 
mid-Victorian  furniture  and  ornaments  that  suited  its 
owner,  who,  Sylvia  now  perceived  by  the  orange  lamplight, 
was  even  fatter  than  she  had  seemed  at  first.  Her  hair, 
worn  in  a  chignon,  was  black,  her  face  was  rosy  and  large, 
almost  monumental,  with  a  plinth  of  chins. 

The  general  so  much  enjoyed  having  a  fresh  audience  for 
his  tales,  and  sat  so  long  over  the  whisky,  that  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough became  worried. 

"Bob,  you  ought  to  go.  You  know  I  don't  like  to  argue 
before  strangers,  but  your  sister  will  be  getting  anxious. 
Miss  Dashwood's  quite  alone,"  she  explained  to  her  guests. 
"I  wonder  if  you'd  mind  walking  back  with  him?"  she 
whispered  to  Sylvia.  "He  lives  in  Redcliffe  Gardens. 
That's  close  to  you,  isn't  it?" 

"If  we  can  have  music  all  the  way,  by  gad!  of  course," 
said  the  general,  standing  up  so  straight  that  Sylvia  was 
afraid  he  would  bump  his  head  on  the  ceiling. 

"Now,  Bob  dear,  don't  get  too  excited  and  do  keep  your 
muffler  well  wrapped  round  your  throat." 

The  general  insisted  on  having  one  more  glass  for  the 
sake  of  old  times,  and  there  was  a  short  delay  in  the  gar- 
den, because  he  stuck  his  cane  fast  in  the  ground  to  show 
the  size  of  the  mulberry-trees  when  he  planted  them,  but 
ultimately  they  said  good  night  to  Mrs.  Gainsborough, 
upon  whom  Sylvia  promised  to  call  next  day,  and  set  out 
for  Redcliffe  Gardens  to  the  sound  of  guitars. 

General  Dashwood  turned  round  from  time  to  time  to 


228  Sylvia    Scarlett 

shake  his  cane  at  passers-by  that  presumed  to  stare  at  the 
unusual  sight  of  an  old  gentleman,  respectable  in  his  dress 
and  demeanor,  escorted  down  Fulham  Road  by  two 
musicians. 

"Do  you  see  anything  so  damned  odd  in  our  appear- 
ance?" he  asked  Sylvia. 

"Nothing  at  all,"  she  assured  him. 

"Sensible  gal!  I've  a  very  good  mind  to  knock  down  the 
next  scoundrel  who  stares  at  us." 

Presently  the  general,  on  whom  the  fresh  air  was  having 
an  effect,  took  Sylvia's  arm  and  grew  confidential. 

"Go  on  playing,"  he  commanded  Jack  Airdale.  "I'm 
only  talking  business.  The  fact  is,"  he  said  to  Sylvia, 
"I'm  worried  about  Polly.  Hope  I  shall  live  another 
twenty  years,  but  fact  is,  my  dear,  I've  never  really  got 
over  that  wound  of  mine  at  Balaclava.  Damme!  I've 
never  been  the  same  man  since." 

Sylvia  wondered  what  he  could  have  been  before. 

"Naturally  she's  well  provided  for.  Bob  Dash  wood 
always  knew  how  to  treat  a  woman.  No  wife,  no  children, 
you  understand  me?  But  it's  the  loneliness.  She  ought 
to  have  somebody  with  her.  She's  a  wonderful  woman, 
and  she  was  a  handsome  gal.  Damme!  she's  still  hand- 
some— what?  Fifty-five  you  know.  By  gad,  yes.  And 
I'm  seventy.  But  it's  the  loneliness.  Ah,  dear,  if  the  gods 
had  been  kind;  but  then  she'd  have  probably  been  married 
by  now." 

The  general  blew  his  nose,  sighed,  and  shook  his  head. 
Sylvia  asked  tenderly  how  long  the  daughter  had  lived. 

"Never  lived  at  all,"  said  the  general,  stopping  dead 
and  opening  his  eyes  very  wide,  as  he  looked  at  Sylvia. 
"Never  was  born.  Never  was  going  to  be  born.  Hale  and 
hearty,  but  too  late  now,  damme!  I've  taken  a  fancy  to 
you.  Sensible  gal!  Damned  sensible.  Why  don't  you  go 
and  live  with  Polly?" 

In  order  to  give  Sylvia  time  to  reflect  upon  her  answer, 
the  general  skipped  along  for  a  moment  to  the  tune  that 
Jack  was  playing. 

"Nothing  between  you  and  him?"  he  asked,  presently, 
indicating  Jack  with  his  cane. 

Sylvia  shook  her  head. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  229 

"Thought  not.  Very  well,  then,  why  don't  you  go  and 
live  with  Polly?  Give  you  time  to  look  round  a  bit.  Under- 
stand what  you  feel  about  playing  for  your  bread  and 
butter  like  this.  Finest  thing  in  the  world  music,  if  you 
haven't  got  to  do  it.  Go  and  see  Polly  to-morrow.  I  spoke 
to  her  about  it  to-night.  She'll  be  delighted.  So  shall  I. 
Here  we  are  in  Redcliffe  Gardens.  Damned  big  house  and 
only  myself  and  my  sister  to  live  in  it.  Live  there  like  two 
needles  in  a  haystack.  Won't  ask  you  in.  Damned  inhos- 
pitable, but  no  good  because  I  shall  have  to  go  to  bed  at 
once.  Perhaps  you  wouldn't  mind  pressing  the  bell? 
Left  my  latch-key  in  me  sister's  work-basket." 

The  door  opened,  and  the  general,  after  bidding  Sylvia 
and  Jack  a  courteous  good  night,  marched  up  his  front- 
door steps  with  as  much  martial  rigidity  as  he  could 
command. 

On  the  way  back  to  Finborough  Road,  Sylvia,  who  had 
been  attracted  to  the  general's  suggestion,  postponed 
raising  the  question  with  Jack  by  telling  him  about  her 
adventure  in  Redcliffe  Gardens  when  she  threw  the  bag  of 
chestnuts  through  the  window.  She  did  not  think  it  fair, 
however,  to  make  any  other  arrangement  without  letting 
him  know,  and  before  she  went  to  see  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
the  next  day  she  announced  her  idea  and  asked  him  if  he 
would  be  much  hurt  by  her  backing  out  of  the  busking. 

"My  dear  girl,  of  course  not,"  said  Jack.  "As  a  matter 
of  fact,  I've  had  rather  a  decent  offer  to  tour  in  a  show 
through  the  East.  I  should  rather  like  to  see  India  and  all 
that.  I  didn't  say  anything  about  it,  because  I  didn't 
want  to  let  you  down.  However,  if  you're  all  right,  I'm  all 
right." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  by  daylight  appealed  to  Sylvia  as 
much  as  ever.  She  told  her  what  the  general  had  said,  and 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  begged  her  to  come  that  very  after- 
noon. 

"The  only  thing  is,"  Sylvia  objected,  "I've  got  a  friend, 
a  girl,  who's  away  at  present,  and  she  might  want  to  go  on 
living  with  me." 

"Let  her  come  too,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  cried.  "The 
more  the  merrier.  Good  Land!  What  a  set-out  we  shall 
have.  The  captain  won't  know  himself.  He's  very  fond 


230  Sylvia    Scarlett 

of  me,  you  know.  But  it  would  be  more  jolly  for  him  to 
have  some  youngsters  about.  He's  that  young.  Upon  my 
word,  you'd  think  he  was  a  boy.  And  he's  always  the 
same.  Oh,  dearie  me!  the  times  we've  had,  you'd  hardly 
believe.  Life  with  him  was  a  regular  circus." 

So  it  was  arranged  that  Sylvia  should  come  at  once  to 
live  with  Mrs.  Gainsborough  in  Tinderbox  Lane,  and  Jack 
went  off  to  the  East. 

The  general  used  to  visit  them  nearly  every  afternoon, 
but  never  in  the  evening. 

"Depend  upon  it,  Sylvia,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  said, 
"he  got  into  rare  hot  water  with  his  sister  the  other  night. 
Of  course  it  was  an  exception,  being  our  anniversary,  and  I 
dare  say  next  March,  if  we're  all  spared,  he'll  be  allowed 
another  evening.  It's  a  great  pity,  though,  that  we  didn't 
meet  first  in  June.  So  much  more  seasonable  for  jollifica- 
tions. But  there,  he  was  young  and  never  looked  forward 
to  being  old." 

The  general  was  not  spared  for  another  anniversary. 
Scarcely  a  month  after  Sylvia  had  gone  to  live  with  Mrs. 
Gainsborough,  he  died  very  quietly  in  the  night.  His 
sister  came  herself  to  break  the  news,  a  frail  old  lady  who 
seemed  very  near  to  joining  her  brother  upon  the  longest 
iourney. 

"She'll  never  be  able  to  keep  away  from  him,"  Mrs. 
Gainsborough  sobbed.  "She'll  worry  and  fret  herself  for 
fear  he  might  catch  cold  in  his  coffin.  And  look  at  me! 
As  healthy  and  rosy  as  a  great  radish!" 

The  etiquette  of  the  funeral  caused  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
considerable  perplexity. 

"Now  tell  me,  Sylvia,  ought  I  or  ought  I  not  to  wear  a 
widow's  veil?  Miss  Dashwood  inviting  me  in  that  friendly 
way,  I  do  want  to  show  that  I  appreciate  her  kindness.  I 
know  that  strictly  we  weren't  married.  I  dare  say  nowa- 
days it  would  be  different,  but  people  was  much  more  old- 
fashioned  about  marrying  ballet-girls  when  I  was  young. 
Still,  it  doesn't  seem  hardly  decent  for  me  to  go  gallivant- 
ing to  his  funeral  in  me  black  watered  silk,  the  same  as  if  I 
were  going  to  the  upper  boxes  of  a  theater  with  Mrs. 
Marsham  or  Mrs.  Beardmore." 

Sylvia  told  Mrs.  Gainsborough  that  in  her  opinion  a 


Sylvia    Scarlett  231 

widow's  cap  at  the  general's  funeral  would  be  like  the  dash 
of  mauve  at  the  wedding  in  the  story.  She  suggested  the 
proper  thing  to  do  would  be  to  buy  a  new  black  dress 
unprofaned  by  visits  to  the  upper  boxes. 

"If  I  can  get  such  an  out  size  in  the  time,"  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough sighed,  "which  is  highly  doubtful." 

However,  the  new  dress  was  obtained,  and  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough went  off  to  the  funeral  at  Brompton. 

"Oh,  it  was  a  beautiful  ceremony,"  she  sobbed,  when 
she  got  home.  "And  really  Miss  Dash  wood,  well,  she 
couldn't  have  been  nicer.  Oh,  my  poor  dear  captain,  if 
only  all  the  clergyman  said  was  true.  And  yet  I  should 
feel  more  comfortable  somehow  if  it  wasn't.  Though  I 
suppose  if  it  was  true  there'd  be  no  objection  to  our  meet- 
ing in  heaven  as  friends  only.  Dear  me,  it  all  sounded  so 
real  when  I  heard  the  clergyman  talking  about  it.  Just  as 
if  he  was  going  up  in  a  lift,  as  you  might  say.  So  natural 
it  sounded.  'A  gallant  soldier,'  he  said,  'a  veteran  of  the 
Crimea.'  So  he  was  gallant,  the  dear  captain.  You  should 
have  seen  him  lay  out  two  roughs  who  tried  to  snatch  me 
watch  and  chain  once  at  the  Epsom  Derby.  He  was  a 
gentleman,  too.  I'm  sure  nobody  ever  treated  any  woman 
kinder  than  he  treated  me.  Seventy  years  old  he  was. 
Captain  Bob  Dashwood  of  the  Seventeenth  Hussars. 
I  can  see  him  now  as  he  used  to  be.  He  liked  to  come 
stamping  up  the  garden.  Oh,  he  was  a  stamper,  and 
'Polly,'  he  hollered  out,  'get  on  your  frills.  Here's  Dick 
Avon — the  Markiss  of  Avon  that  was'  (oh,  he  was  a  wild 
thing)  'and  Jenny  Ward'  (you  know,  she  threw  herself 
off  Westminster  Bridge  and  caused  such  a  stir  in  Jubilee 
year).  People  talked  a  lot  about  it  at  the  time.  I  remem- 
ber we  drove  to  the  Star  and  Garter  at  Richmond  that 
day — a  lovely  June  day  it  was — and  caused  quite  a 
sensation,  because  we  all  looked  so  smart.  Oh,  my  Bob, 
my  Bob,  it  only  seems  yesterday." 

Sylvia  consoled  Mrs.  Gainsborough  ana  rejoiced  in  her 
assurance  that  she  did  not  know  what  she  should  have 
done. 

"Fancy  him  thinking  about  me  being  so  lonely  and 
wanting  you  to  come  and  live  with  me.  Depend  upon  it 
he  knew  he  was  going  to  die  all  of  a  sudden,"  said  Mrs. 


232  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Gainsborough.  "Oh,  there's  no  doubt  he  was  clever 
enough  to  have  been  a  doctor.  Only  of  course  with  his 
family  he  had  to  be  a  soldier." 

Sylvia  mostly  spent  these  spring  days  in  the  garden  with 
Mrs.  Gainsborough,  listening  to  her  tales  about  the  past 
and  helping  her  to  overlook  the  labors  of  the  jobbing 
gardener  who  came  in  twice  a  week.  Her  landlady  or 
hostess  (for  the  exact  relation  was  not  yet  determined)  was 
very  strict  in  this  regard,  because  her  father  had  been  a 
nursery  gardener  and  she  insisted  upon  a  peculiar  knowl- 
edge of  the  various  ways  in  which  horticultural  obligations 
could  be  avoided.  When  Sylvia  raised  the  question  of  her 
status  at  Mulberry  Cottage,  Mrs.  Gainsborough  always 
begged  her  not  to  be  in  a  hurry  to  settle  anything;  later 
on,  when  Sylvia  was  able  to  earn  some  money,  she  should 
pay  for  her  board,  but  payment  for  her  lodging,  so  long  as 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  alive  and  the  house  was  not  burned 
to  the  ground,  was  never  to  be  mentioned.  That  was 
certainly  the  captain's  intention  and  it  must  be  respected. 

Sylvia  often  went  to  see  Mrs.  Gowndry  in  Fin  borough 
Road  in  case  there  should  be  news  of  Lily.  Her  old  land- 
lady was  always  good  enough  to  say  that  she  missed  her, 
and  in  her  broken-up  existence  the  affection  even  of  Mrs. 
Gowndry  was  very  grateful. 

"I've  told  me  old  man  to  keep  a  good  lookout  for  her," 
said  Mrs.  Gowndry. 

"He's  hardly  likely  to  meet  her  at  his  work,"  Sylvia 
said. 

"Certainly  not.  No.  But  he  often  goes  up  to  get  a 
breath  of  air — well — it  isn't  to  be  expected  that  he 
wouldn't.  I  often  say  to  him  when  he  comes  home  a  bit 
grumblified  that  his  profession  is  as  bad  as  a  miner's,  and 
they  only  does  eight  hours,  whereas  in  his  lavatory  they 
does  twelve.  Too  long,  too  long,  and  it  must  be  fidgety 
work,  with  people  bobbing  in  and  out  all  the  time  and 
always  in  a  hurry,  as  you  might  say.  Of  course  now  and 
again  you  get  a  lodger  who  makes  himself  unpleasant, 
but,  year  in  year  out,  looking  after  lodgers  is  a  more 
peaceful  sort  of  a  life  than  looking  after  a  lavatory.  Don't 
you  be  afraid,  Miss  Scarlett.  If  ever  a  letter  comes  for 
you  our  Tommy  shall  bring  it  straight  round,  and  he's  a 


Sylvia    Scarlett  233 

boy  as  can  be  trusted  not  to  lose  anything  he's  given. 
You  wouldn't  lose  the  pretty  lady's  letter,  would  you, 
Tommy  ?  You  never  lose  nothing,  do  you  ?" 

"I  lost  a  acid-drop  once." 

"There,  fancy  him  remembering.  That's  a  hit  for  his 
ma,  that  is.  He'd  only  half  sucked  this  here  acid-drop  and 
laid  it  aside  to  finish  sucking  it  when  he  went  up  to  bed, 
and  I  must  have  swept  it  up,  not  thinking  what  it  was. 
Fancy  him  remembering.  He  don't  talk  much,  but  he's  a 
artful  one." 

Tommy  had  a  bagful  of  acid-drops  soon  after  this,  for  he 
brought  a  letter  to  Sylvia  from  Lily: 

DEAR  SYLVIA, — I  suppose  you're  awfully  angry  with  me,  but  Claude 
went  on  tour  a  month  ago,  and  I  hate  being  alone.  I  wonder  if  this  will 
find  you.  I'm  staying  in  rotten  rooms  in  Camden  Town.  14  Winchester 
Terrace.  Send  me  a  card  if  you're  in  London. 

Loving,  LILY. 

Sylvia  immediately  went  over  to  Camden  Town  and 
brought  Lily  away  from  the  rooms,  which  were  indeed 
"rotten."  When  she  had  installed  her  at  Mulberry 
Cottage  she  worked  herself  up  to  having  a  clear  under- 
standing with  Lily,  but  when  it  came  to  the  point  she  felt 
it  was  useless  to  scold  her  except  in  fun,  as  a  child  scolds 
her  doll.  She  did,  however,  treat  her  henceforth  in  what 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  called  a  "highly  dictatorial  way." 
Sylvia  thought  she  could  give  Lily  the  appearance  of 
moral  or  immoral  energy,  however  impossible  it  might  be 
to  give  her  the  reality.  With  this  end  in  view  she  made 
Lily's  will  entirely  subordinate  to  her  own,  which  was  not 
difficult.  The  affection  that  Sylvia  now  had  for  her  was 
not  so  much  tender  as  careful,  the  affection  one  might  feel 
for  a  bicycle  rather  than  for  a  horse.  She  was  always 
brutally  frank  with  herself  about  their  relation  to  each 
other,  and  because  she  never  congratulated  herself  upon 
her  kindness  she  was  able  to  sustain  her  affection. 

"There  is  nothing  so  fickle  as  a  virtuous  impulse," 
Sylvia  declared  to  herself.  "It's  a  kind  of  moral  usury 
which  is  always  looking  for  a  return  on  the  investment. 
The  moment  the  object  fails  to  pay  an  exorbitant  interest 
in  gratitude,  the  impulse  to  speculate  withers  up.  The 


234  Sylvia    Scarlett 

lowest  circle  in  hell  should  be  reserved  for  people  who  try 
to  help  others  and  cannot  understand  why  their  kindness 
is  not  appreciated.  Really  that  was  Philip's  trouble. 
He  never  got  over  being  hurt  that  I  didn't  perpetually 
remind  him  of  his  splendid  behavior  toward  me.  I  suppose 
I'm  damned  inhuman.  Well,  well,  I  couldn't  have  stood 
those  three  months  after  I  left  him  if  I  hadn't  been." 

The  affair  between  Lily  and  Claude  Raglan  was  not 
much  discussed.  He  had,  it  seemed,  only  left  her  because 
his  career  was  at  stake;  he  had  received  a  good  offer  and 
she  had  not  wished  to  detain  him. 

"But  is  it  over  between  you?"  Sylvia  demanded. 

"Yes,  of  course,  it's  over — at  any  rate,  for  a  long  time  to 
come,"  Lily  answered.  "He  cried  when  he  left  me.  He 
really  was  a  nice  boy.  If  he  lives,  he  thinks  he  will  be  a 
success — a  real  success.  He  introduced  me  to  a  lot  of  nice 
boys." 

"That  was  rash  of  him,"  Sylvia  laughed.  "Were  they 
as  nice  as  the  lodgings  he  introduced  you  to?" 

"No,  don't  laugh  at  him.  He  couldn't  afford  anything 
else." 

"But  why  in  Heaven's  name,  if  you  wanted  to  play 
around  together,  had  you  got  to  leave  Finborough  Road?" 

Lily  blushed  faintly.  "You  won't  be  angry  if  I  tell 
you?" 

Sylvia  shook  her  head. 

"Claude  said  he  couldn't  bear  the  idea  that  you  were 
looking  at  us.  He  said  it  spoiled  everything." 

"What  did  he  think  I  was  going  to  do?"  Sylvia  snapped. 
"Put  pepper  on  the  hymeneal  pillow?" 

"You  said  you  wouldn't  be  angry." 

"I'm  not." 

"Well,  don't  use  long  words,  because  it  makes  me  think 
you  are." 

Soon  after  Lily  came  to  Tinderbox  Lane,  Sylvia  met 
Dorothy  Lonsdale  with  a  very  lovely  dark  girl  called  Olive 
Fanshawe,  a  fellow-member  of  the  Vanity  chorus.  Doro- 
thy was  glad  to  see  her,  principally,  Sylvia  thought, 
because  she  was  able  to  talk  about  lunch  at  Romano's  and 
supper  at  the  Savoy. 

"Look  here,"  Sylvia  said.    "A  little  less  of  the  Queen  of 


Sylvia    Scarlett  235 

Sheba,  if  you  don't  mind.  Don't  forget  I'm  one  of  the 
blokes  as  is  glad  to  smell  the  gratings  outside  a  baker's." 

Miss  Fanshawe  laughed,  and  Sylvia  looked  at  her 
quickly,  wondering  if  she  were  worth  while. 

Dorothy  was  concerned  to  hear  she  was  still  with  Lily. 
"That  dreadful  girl,"  she  simpered. 

"Oh,  go  to  hell,"  said  Sylvia,  sharply,  and  walked  off. 

Next  day  a  note  came  from  Dorothy  to  invite  her  and 
Lily  to  tea  at  the  flat  she  shared  with  Olive. 

"Wonderful  how  attractive  rudeness  is,"  Sylvia  com- 
mented. 

"Oh,  do  let's  go.  Look,  she  lives  in  Half  Moon  Street," 
Lily  said. 

"And  a  damned  good  address  for  the  demi-monde," 
Sylvia  added. 

However,  the  tea-party  was  definitely  a  success,  and  for 
the  rest  of  the  summer  Sylvia  and  Lily  spent  a  lot  of  time 
on  the  river  with  what  Sylvia  called  the  semicircle  of  inti- 
mate friends  they  had  brought  away  from  Half  Moon 
Street.  She  grew  very  fond  of  Olive  Fanshawe  and  warned 
her  against  her  romantic  adoration  of  Dorothy. 

"But  you're  just  as  romantic  over  Lily,"  Olive  argued. 

"Not  a  single  illusion  left,  my  dear,"  Sylvia  assured  her. 
"Besides,  I  should  never  compare  Lily  with  Dorothy. 
Dorothy  is  more  beautiful,  more  ambitious,  more  merce- 
nary. She'll  probably  marry  a  lord.  She's  acquired  the  art 
of  getting  a  lot  for  nothing  to  a  perfection  that  could  only 
be  matched  by  a  politician  or  a  girl  with  the  same  brown 
eyes  in  the  same  glory  of  light-brown  hair.  And  when  it 
suits  her  she'll  go  back  on  her  word  just  as  gracefully,  and 
sell  her  best  friend  as  readily  as  a  politician  will  sell  his 
country." 

"You're  very  down  on  politicians.  I  think  there's  some- 
thing so  romantic  about  them,"  Olive  declared.  "Young 
politicians,  of  course." 

"My  dear,  you'd  think  a  Bradshaw  romantic." 

"It  is  sometimes,"  said  Olive. 

"Well,  I  know  two  young  politicians,"  Sylvia  continued. 
"A  Liberal  and  a  Conservative.  They  both  spend  their 
whole  time  in  hoping  I  sha'n't  suggest  walking  down  Bond 
Street  with  them,  the  Liberal  because  I  may  see  a  frock 


236  Sylvia    Scarlett 

and  the  Conservative  because  he  may  meet  a  friend.  They 
both  make  love  to  me  as  if  they  were  addressing  their 
future  constituents,  with  a  mixture  of  flattery,  condescen- 
sion, and  best  clothes;  but  they  reserve  all  their  affection 
for  the  constituency.  As  I  tell  them,  if  they'd  fondle  the 
constituency  and  nurse  me,  I  should  endure  their  company 
more  easily.  Unhappily,  they  both  think  I'm  intelligent, 
and  a  man  who  admires  a  woman's  intelligence  is  like  a 
woman  who  admires  her  friend's  looking-glass — each  one  is 
granting  an  audience  to  himself." 

"At  any  rate,"  said  Olive,  "you've  managed  to  make 
yourself  quite  a  mystery.  All  the  men  we  know  are  puz- 
zled by  you." 

"Tell  them,  my  dear,  I'm  quite  simple.  I  represent  the 
original  conception  of  the  Hetaera,  a  companion.  I  don't 
want  to  be  made  love  to,  and  every  man  who  makes  love 
to  me  I  dislike.  If  I  ever  do  fall  in  love,  I'll  be  a  man's 
slave.  Of  that  I'm  sure.  So  don't  utter  dark  warnings, 
for  I've  warned  myself  already.  I  do  want  a  certain  num- 
ber of  things — nice  dresses,  because  I  owe  them  to  myself, 
good  books,  and — well,  really,  I  think  that's  all.  In  return 
for  the  dresses  and  the  books — I  suppose  one  ought  to  add 
an  occasional  fiver  just  to  show  there's  no  ill  feeling  about 
preferring  to  sleep  in  my  own  room — in  return  for  very 
little.  I'm  ready  to  talk,  walk,  laugh,  sing,  dance,  tell 
incomparably  bawdy  stories,  and,  what  is  after  all  the  most 
valuable  return  of  all,  I'm  ready  to  sit  perfectly  still  and 
let  myself  be  bored  to  death  while  giving  him  an  idea  that 
I'm  listening  intelligently.  Of  course,  sometimes  I  do 
listen  intelligently  without  being  bored.  In  that  case  I 
let  him  off  with  books  only." 

"You  really  are  an  extraordinary  girl,"  said  Olive. 

"You,  on  the  other  hand,  my  dear,"  Sylvia  went  on, 
"always  give  every  man  the  hope  that  if  he's  wise  and 
tender,  and  of  course  lavish — ultimately  all  men  believe  in 
the  pocket — he  will  be  able  to  cry  Open  Sesame  to  the 
mysterious  treasure  of  romantic  love  that  he  discerns  in 
your  dark  eyes,  in  your  caressing  voice,  and  in  your  fervid 
aspirations.  In  the  end  you'll  give  it  all  to  a  curly-headed 
actor  and  live  happily  ever  afterward  at  Ravenscourt 
Park.  Farewell  to  Coriolanus  in  his  smart  waistcoat; 


Sylvia    Scarlett  237 

fa  re  \vell  to  Julius  Cassar  and  his  amber  cigarette-holder; 
farewell  to  every  nincompoop  with  a  top-hat  as  bright  as  a 
halo;  farewell  incidentally  to  Dolly  Lonsdale,  who'll  dis- 
cover that  Ravenscourt  Park  is  too  difficult  for  the 
chauffeur  to  find." 

"Oh,  Sylvia,  shut  up!"  Olive  said.  "I  believe  you  drank 
too  much  champagne  at  lunch." 

"I'm  glad  you  reminded  me,"  Sylvia  cried.  "By  Jove! 
I'd  forgotten  the  fizz.  That's  where  we  all  meet  on  com- 
mon ground — or  rather,  I  should  say  in  common  liquid. 
It  sounds  like  mixed  bathing.  It  is  a  kind  of  mixed 
bathing,  after  all.  You're  quite  right,  Olive,  whatever  our 
different  tastes  in  men,  clothes,  and  behavior,  we  all  must 
have  champagne.  Champagne  is  a  bloody  sight  thicker 
than  water,  as  the  prodigal  said  when  his  father  uncorked 
a  magnum  to  wash  down  the  fatted  calf." 

Gradually  Sylvia  did  succeed  in  sorting  out  from  the 
various  men  a  few  who  were  content  to  accept  the  terms  of 
friendship  she  offered.  She  had  to  admit  that  most  of 
them  fell  soon  or  late,  and  with  each  new  man  she  gave 
less  and  took  more.  As  regards  Lily,  she  tried  to  keep  her 
as  unapproachable  as  herself,  but  it  was  not  always  possi- 
ble. Sometimes  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders  she  let  Lily 
go  her  own  way,  though  she  was  always  hard  as  steel  with 
the  fortunate  suitor.  Once  a  rich  young  financier  called 
Hausberg,  who  had  found  Lily  somewhat  expensive, 
started  a  theory  that  Sylvia  was  living  on  her  friend;  she 
heard  of  the  slander  and  dealt  with  it  very  directly.  The 
young  man  in  question  was  anxious  to  set  Lily  up  in  a  flat 
of  her  own.  Sylvia  let  Lily  appear  to  view  the  plan  with 
favor.  The  flat  was  taken  and  furnished;  a  date  was  fixed 
for  Lily's  entrance;  the  young  man  was  given  the  latch- 
key and  told  to  come  at  midnight.  When  he  arrived,  there 
was  nobody  in  the  flat  but  a  chimpanzee  that  Sylvia  had 
bought  at  Jamrack's.  She  and  Lily  were  at  Brighton  with 
Arthur  Lonsdale  and  Tony  Clarehaven,  whom  they  had 
recently  met  again  at  a  Covent  Garden  ball. 

They  were  both  just  down  from  Oxford,  and  Lonsdale 
had  taken  a  great  fancy  to  Lily.  He  was  a  jolly  youth, 
whose  father,  Lord  Cleveden,  had  consented  after  a  struggle 
to  let  him  go  into  partnership  with  a  distinguished  pro- 


238  Sylvia    Scarlett 

fessional  motorist.  It  was  with  him  that  Dorothy  Lons- 
dale  claimed  distant  kinship.  Clarehaven's  admiration 
for  Dorothy  had  not  diminished;  somebody  had  told  him 
that  the  best  way  to  get  hold  of  her  would  be  to  make  her 
jealous.  This  was  his  object  in  inviting  Sylvia  to  Brighton. 
Sylvia  agreed  to  go,  partly  to  tease  Dorothy,  partly  to  dis- 
appoint Clarehaven.  Lonsdale  had  helped  her  to  get  the 
chimpanzee  into  the  flat,  and  all  the  way  down  to  Brigh- 
ton they  laughed. 

"My  word,  you  know!"  Lonsdale  chuckled,  "the  jolly 
old  chimpanzee  will  probably  eat  the  wall-paper.  What  do 
you  think  Hausberg  will  say  when  he  opens  the  door?" 

"I  expect  he'll  say,  'Are  you  there,  Lily?'"  Sylvia 
suggested. 

"What  do  you  think  the  jolly  old  chimpanzee  will  do? 
Probably  bite  his  ear  off — what  ?  Topping.  Good  engine 
this.  We're  doing  fifty-nine  or  an  unripe  sixty.  Why  does 
a  chicken  cross  the  road?  No  answer,  thank  you,  this 
time.  Must  slow  down  a  bit.  There's  a  trap  somewhere 
here.  I  say,  you  know,  I've  got  a  sister  called  Sylvia. 
Hullo!  hullo!  Mind  your  hoop,  Tommy!  Too  late. 
Funeral  on  Friday.  Colonial  papers  please  copy.  I  won- 
der how  they'll  get  the  chimpanzee  out  again.  I  told  the 
hall  porter,  when  he  cast  a  cold  and  glassy  eye  on  the  crate, 
it  was  a  marble  Venus  that  Mr.  Hausberg  was  going  to  use 
as  a  hat-stand.  My  word!  I  expect  the  jolly  old  flat  looks 
like  the  last  days  of  Pompeii  by  now.  When  I  undid  the 
door  of  the  crate  the  brute  was  making  a  noise  like  a 
discontented  cistern.  I  rapidly  scattered  Brazil  nuts  and 
bananas  on  the  floor  to  occupy  his  mind  and  melted  away 
like  a  strawberry  ice  on  a  grill.  Hullo!  We're  getting  into 
Brighton." 

Clarehaven  did  not  enjoy  his  week-end,  for  it  consisted 
entirely  of  a  lecture  by  Sylvia  on  his  behavior.  This 
caused  him  to  drink  many  more  whisky-and-sodas  than 
usual,  and  he  came  back  to  London  on  Monday  with  a  bad 
headache,  which  he  attributed  to  Sylvia's  talking. 

"My  dear  man,  7  haven't  got  a  mouth.  You  have," 
she  said. 

This  week-end  caused  a  quarrel  between  Sylvia  and 
Dorothy,  for  which  she  was  not  sorry.  She  had  recently 


Sylvia    Scarlett  239 

met  a  young  painter,  Ronald  Walker,  who  wanted  Lily  to 
sit  for  him;  he  had  taken  them  once  or  twice  to  the  Cafe 
Royal,  which  Sylvia  had  found  a  pleasant  change  from  the 
society  of  Half  Moon  Street.  Soon  after  this  Lonsdale  be- 
gan a  liaison  with  Queenie  Molyneux,  of  the  Frivolity  The- 
ater. The  only  member  of  the  Half  Moon  Street  set  with 
whom  Sylvia  kept  up  a  friendship  was  Olive  Fanshawe. 
16 


CHAPTER  IX 

DURING  her  second  year  at  Mulberry  Cottage 
Sylvia  achieved  an  existence  that,  save  for  the 
absence  of  any  one  great  motive  like  art  or  love,  was 
complete.  She  had  also  one  real  friend  in  Jack  Air- 
dale,  who  had  returned  from  his  tour.  Apart  from  the 
pleasant  security  of  knowing  that  he  would  always  be 
content  with  good-fellowship  only,  he  encouraged  her  to 
suppose  that  somewhere,  could  she  but  find  the  first  step, 
a  career  lay  before  her.  Sylvia  did  not  in  her  heart  believe 
in  this  career,  but  in  moments  of  depression  Jack's  confi- 
dence was  of  the  greatest  comfort,  and  she  was  always  ready 
to  play  with  the  notion,  particularly  as  it  seemed  to  pro- 
vide a  background  for  her  present  existence  and  to  cover 
the  futility  of  its  perfection.  Jack  was  anxious  that  she 
should  try  to  get  on  the  proper  stage,  but  Sylvia  feared  to 
destroy  by  premature  failure  a  part  of  the  illusion  of 
ultimate  success  she  continued  to  allow  herself  by  finally 
ruling  out  the  theater  as  one  of  the  possible  channels  to 
that  career.  In  the  summer  Lily  became  friendly  with 
one  or  two  men  whom  Sylvia  could  not  endure,  but  a 
lassitude  had  descended  upon  her  and  she  lacked  any 
energy  to  stop  the  association.  As  a  matter  of  fact  she 
was  sickening  for  diphtheria  at  the  time,  and  while  she  was 
in  the  hospital  Lily  took  to  frequenting  the  Orient  prome- 
nade with  these  new  friends.  As  soon  as  Sylvia  came  out 
they  were  banished;  but  each  time  that  she  intervened  on 
Lily's  behalf  it  seemed  to  her  a  little  less  worth  while. 
Nevertheless,  finding  that  Lily  was  bored  by  her  own 
habit  of  staying  in  at  night,  she  used  much  against  her  will 
to  accompany  her  very  often  to  various  places  of  amuse- 
ment without  a  definite  invitation  from  a  man  to  escort 
them. 

One  day  at  the  end  of  December  Mrs.  Gainsborough 


Sylvia    Scarlett  241 

came  home  from  shopping  with  two  tickets  for  a  fancy- 
dress  dance  at  the  Redcliffe  Hall  in  Fulham  Road.  When 
the  evening  arrived  Sylvia  did  not  want  to  go,  for  the 
weather  was  raw  and  foggy;  but  Mrs.  Gainsborough  was 
so  much  disappointed  at  her  tickets  not  being  used  that  to 
please  her  Sylvia  agreed  to  go.  It  seemed  unlikely  to  be  an 
amusing  affair,  so  she  and  Lily  went  in  the  most  ordinary 
of  their  fancy  dresses  as  masked  Pierrettes.  The  company, 
as  they  had  anticipated,  was  quite  exceptionally  dull. 

"My  dear,  it's  like  a  skating-rink  on  Saturday  after- 
noon," Sylvia  said.  "We'll  have  one  more  dance  together 
and  then  go  home." 

They  were  standing  at  the  far  end  of  the  hall  near  the 
orchestra,  and  Sylvia  was  making  disdainful  comments 
upon  the  various  couples  that  were  passing  out  to  refresh 
themselves  or  flirt  in  the  draughty  corridors. 

Suddenly  Sylvia  saw  a  man  in  evening  dress  pushing  his 
way  in  their  direction,  regardless  of  what  ribbons  he  tore 
or  toes  he  outraged  in  his  transit.  He  was  a  young  man  of 
about  twenty-three  or  twenty-four,  with  a  countenance  in 
which  eagerness  was  curiously  mixed  with  impassivity. 
Sylvia  saw  him  as  one  sees  a  picture  on  first  entering  a 
gallery,  which  one  postpones  visiting  with  a  scarcely  con- 
scious and  yet  perfectly  deliberate  anticipation  of  pleasure 
later  on.  She  continued  talking  to  Lily,  who  had  her  back 
to  the  new-comer;  while  she  talked  she  was  aware  that  all 
her  own  attention  was  fixed  upon  this  new-comer  and 
that  she  was  asking  herself  the  cause  of  the  contradictions 
in  his  face  and  deciding  that  it  was  due  to  the  finely  carved 
immobile  mouth  beneath  such  eager  eyes.  Were  they 
brown  or  blue?  The  young  man  had  reached  them,  and 
from  that  immobile  mouth  came  in  accents  that  were 
almost  like  despair  a  salutation  to  Lily.  Sylvia  felt  for  a 
moment  as  if  she  had  been  wounded;  she  saw  that  Lily 
was  looking  at  her  with  that  expression  she  always  put  on 
when  she  thought  Sylvia  was  angry  with  her;  then  after 
what  seemed  an  age  turned  round  slowly  to  the  young  man 
and,  lifting  her  mask,  engaged  in  conversation  with  him. 
Sylvia  felt  that  she  was  trespassing  upon  the  borders  of 
great  emotion  and  withdrew  out  of  hearing,  until  Lily 
beckoned  her  forward  to  introduce  the  young  man  as  Mr. 


242  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Michael  Fane.  Sylvia  did  not  raise  her  mask,  and  after 
nodding  to  him  again  retired  from  the  conversation. 

"But  this  is  absurd,"  she  said  to  herself,  after  a  while; 
and  abruptly  raising  her  mask  she  broke  in  upon  the  duo- 
logue. The  music  had  begun.  He  was  asking  Lily  to 
dance,  and  she,  waiting  for  Sylvia's  leave  in  a  way  that 
made  Sylvia  want  to  slap  her,  was  hesitating. 

"What  rot,  Lily!"  she  exclaimed,  impatiently.  "Of 
course  you  may  dance." 

The  young  man  turned  toward  Sylvia  and  smiled.  A 
moment  later  he  and  Lily  had  waltzed  away. 

"Good  God!"  said  Sylvia  to  herself.  "Am  I  going 
mad?  A  youth  smiles  at  me  and  I  feel  inclined  to  cry. 
What  is  this  waltz  they're  playing?" 

She  looked  at  one  of  the  sheets  of  music,  but  the  name 
was  nowhere  legible,  and  she  nearly  snatched  it  away  from 
the  player  in  exasperation.  Nothing  seemed  to  matter  in 
the  world  except  that  she  should  know  the  name  of  this 
waltz.  Without  thinking  what  she  was  doing  she  thumped 
the  clarinet-player  on  the  shoulder,  who  stopped  indig- 
nantly and  asked  if  she  was  trying  to  knock  his  teeth  out. 

"What  waltz  are  you  playing?  What  waltz  are  you 
playing?" 

"  'Waltz  Amarousse.'  Perhaps  you'll  punch  one  of  the 
strings  next  time,  miss?" 

"Happy  New- Year,"  Sylvia  laughed,  and  the  clarinet- 
player  with  a  disgusted  glance  turned  round  to  his  music 
again. 

By  the  time  the  dance  was  over  and  the  other  two  had 
rejoined  her,  Sylvia  was  laughing  at  herself;  but  they 
thought  she  was  laughing  at  them.  Fane  and  Lily  danced 
several  more  dances  together,  and  gradually  Sylvia  made 
up  her  mind  that  she  disapproved  of  this  new  intimacy, 
this  sudden  invasion  of  Lily's  life  from  the  past  from  which 
she  should  have  cut  herself  off  as  completely  as  Sylvia  had 
done  from  her  own.  What  right  had  Lily  to  complicate 
their  existence  in  this  fashion?  How  unutterably  dull  this 
masquerade  was!  She  whispered  to  Lily  in  the  next  inter- 
val that  she  was  tired  and  wanted  to  go  home. 

The  fog  outside  was  very  dense.  Fane  took  their  arms 
to  cross  the  road,  and  Sylvia,  though  he  caught  her  arm 


Sylvia    Scarlett  243 

close  to  him,  felt  drearily  how  mechanical  its  gesture  was 
toward  her,  how  vital  toward  Lily.  Neither  of  her  com- 
panions spoke  to  each  other,  and  she  asked  them  questions 
about  their  former  friendship,  which  Lily  did  not  answer 
because  she  was  evidently  afraid  of  her  annoyance,  and 
which  he  did  not  answer  because  he  did  not  hear.  Sylvia 
had  made  up  her  mind  that  Fane  should  not  enter  Mul- 
berry Cottage,  when  Lily  whispered  to  her  that  she  should 
ask  him,  but  at  the  last  moment  she  remembered  his  smile 
and  invited  him  to  supper.  A  strange  shyness  took  posses- 
sion of  her,  which  she  tried  to  cover  by  exaggeration, 
almost,  she  thought,  hysterical  fooling  with  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough that  lasted  until  two  o'clock  in  the  morning  of 
New- Year's  day,  when  Michael  Fane  went  home  after 
exacting  a  promise  from  the  two  girls  to  lunch  with  him  at 
Kectner's  that  afternoon.  Lily  was  so  sleepy  that  she  did 
not  rise  to  see  him  out.  Sylvia  was  glad  of  the  indifference. 

Next  morning  Sylvia  found  out  that  Michael  was  a 
"nice  boy"  whom  Lily  had  known  in  West  Kensington 
when  she  was  seventeen.  He  had  been  awfully  in  love 
with  her,  and  her  mother  had  been  annoyed  because  he 
wanted  to  marry  her.  He  had  only  been  seventeen  him- 
self, and  like  many  other  school-boy  loves  of  those  days 
this  one  had  just  ended  somehow,  but  exactly  how  Lily 
could  not  recall.  She  wished  that  Sylvia  would  not  go  on 
asking  so  many  questions;  she  really  could  not  remember 
anything  more  about  it.  They  had  gone  once  for  a  long 
drive  in  a  cab,  and  there  had  been  a  row  about  that  at 
home. 

"Are  you  in  love  with  him  now?"  Sylvia  demanded. 

"No,  of  course  not.    How  could  I  be?" 

Sylvia  was  determined  that  she  never  should  be,  either: 
there  should  be  no  more  Claude  Raglans  to  interfere  with 
their  well-devised  existence. 

During  the  next  fortnight  Sylvia  took  care  that  Lily  and 
Michael  should  never  be  alone  together,  and  she  tried  very 
often,  after  she  discovered  that  Michael  was  sensitive,  to 
shock  him  by  references  to  their  life,  and  with  an  odd 
perverseness  to  try  particularly  to  shock  him  about  herself 
by  making  brutally  coarse  remarks  in  front  of  Lily,  taking 
pleasure  in  his  embarrassment.  Yet  there  was  in  the  end 


244  Sylvia     Scarlett 

little  pleasure  in  shocking  him,  for  he  had  no  conventional 
niceness;  yet  there  was  a  pleasure  in  hurting  him,  a  fierce 
pleasure. 

"Though  why  on  earth  I  bother  about  his  feelings,  I 
can't  imagine,"  Sylvia  said  to  herself.  "All  I  know  is  that 
he's  an  awful  bore  and  makes  us  break  all  sorts  of  engage- 
ments with  other  people.  You  liar!  You  know  he's  not  a 
bore,  and  you  know  that  you  don't  care  a  damn  how  many 
engagements  you  break.  Don't  pose  to  yourself.  You're 
jealous  of  him  because  you  think  that  Lily  may  get  really 
fond  of  him.  You  don't  want  her  to  get  fond  of  him, 
because  you  don't  think  she's  good  enough  for  him.  You 
don't  want  him  to  get  fond  of  her" 

The  boldness  of  this  thought,  the  way  in  which  it  had 
attacked  the  secret  recesses  of  her  being,  startled  Sylvia. 
It  was  almost  a  sensation  of  turning  pale  at  herself,  of  fear- 
ing to  understand  herself,  that  made  her  positively  stifle 
the  mood  and  flee  from  these  thoughts,  which  might 
violate  her  personality. 

Down-stairs,  there  was  a  telegram  from  Olive  Fanshawe 
at  Brighton,  begging  Sylvia  to  come  at  once;  she  was 
terribly  unhappy;  Sylvia  could  scarcely  tear  herself  away 
from  Mulberry  Cottage  at  such  a  moment  even  for  Olive, 
but,  knowing  that  if  she  did  not  go  she  would  be  sorry,  she 
went. 

Sylvia  found  Olive  in  a  state  of  collapse.  Dorothy 
Lonsdale  and  she  had  been  staying  in  Brighton  for  a  week's 
holiday,  and  yesterday  Dorothy  had  married  Clarehaven. 
Sylvia  laughed. 

"Oh,  Sylvia,  don't  laugh!']  Olive  begged.  "It  was 
perfectly  dreadful.  Of  course  it  was  a  great  shock  to  me, 
but  I  did  not  show  it.  I  told  her  she  could  count  on  me  as 
a  pal  to  help  her  in  every  way.  And  what  do  you  think  she 
said?  Sylvia,  you'll  never  guess.  It  was  too  cruel.  She 
said  to  me  in  a  voice  of  ice,  dear — really,  a  voice  of  ice — she 
said  the  best  way  I  could  help  her  was  by  not  seeing  her 
any  more.  She  did  not  intend  to  go  near  the  stage  door  of 
a  theater  again.  She  did  not  want  to  know  any  of  her  stage 
friends  any  more.  She  didn't  even  say  she  was  sorry;  she 
was  quite  calm.  She  was  like  ice,  Sylvia  dear.  Clarehaven 
came  in  and  she  asked  if  he'd  telegraphed  to  his  mother, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  245 

and  when  he  said  he  had  she  got  up  as  if  she'd  been  calling 
on  me  quite  formally  and  shook  hands,  and  said:  'Good-by, 
Olive.  We're  going  down  to  Clare  Court  to-morrow,  and  I 
don't  expect  we  shall  see  each  other  again  for  a  long  time/ 
Clarehaven  said  what  rot  and  that  I  must  come  down  to 
Devonshire  and  stay  with  them,  and  Dolly  froze  him,  my 
dear;  she  froze  him  with  a  look.  I  never  slept  all  night, 
and  the  book  I  was  reading  began  to  repeat  itself,  and  I 
thought  I  was  going  mad;  but  this  morning  I  found  the 
printers  had  made  some  mistake  and  put  sixteen  pages 
twice  over.  But  I  really  thought  I  was  going  mad,  so  I 
wired  for  you.  Oh,  Sylvia,  Sylvia,  say  something  to  con- 
sole me!  She  was  like  ice,  dear,  really  like  a  block  of  ice." 

"If  she'd  only  waited  till  you  had  found  the  curly- 
headed  actor  it  wouldn't  have  mattered  so  much,"  Sylvia 
said. 

Poor  Olive  really  was  on  the  verge  of  a  nervous  collapse, 
and  Sylvia  stayed  wTith  her  three  days,  though  it  was  agony 
to  leave  Lily  in  London  with  Michael  Fane.  Nor  could  she 
talk  of  her  own  case  to  Olive.  It  would  seem  like  a  com- 
petitive sorrow,  a  vulgar  bit  of  egotistic  assumption  to  suit 
the  occasion. 

When  Sylvia  got  back  to  Mulberry  Cottage  she  found 
an  invitation  from  Jack  Airdale  to  dine  at  Richmond  and 
go  to  a  dance  with  him  afterward.  Conscious  from  some- 
thing in  Michael's  watchful  demeanor  of  a  development  in 
the  situation,  she  was  pleased  to  be  able  to  disquiet  him  by 
insisting  that  Lily  should  go  with  her. 

On  the  way,  Sylvia  extracted  from  Lily  that  Michael 
had  asked  her  to  marry  him.  It  took  all  Jack  Airdale's 
good  nature  not  to  be  angry  with  Sylvia  that  night — as  she 
tore  the  world  to  shreds.  At  the  moment  when  Lily  had 
told  her  she  had  felt  with  a  despair  that  was  not  communi- 
cable, as  Olive's  despair  had  been,  how  urgent  it  was  to 
stop  Michael  from  marrying  Lily.  She  was  not  good 
enough  for  him.  The  knowledge  rang  in  her  brain  like  a 
discordant  clangor  of  bells,  and  Sylvia  knew  in  that 
moment  that  the  real  reason  of  her  thinking  this  was 
jealousy  of  Lily.  The  admission  tortured  her  pride,  and 
after  a  terrible  night  in  which  the  memory  of  Olive's  grief 
interminably  dwelt  upon  and  absorbed  helped  her  to 


246  Sylvia    Scarlett 

substitute  the  pretense,  so  passionately  invoked  that  it 
almost  ceased  to  be  a  pretense,  that  she  was  opposing  the 
marriage  partly  because  Michael  would  never  keep  Lily 
faithful,  partly  because  she  could  not  bear  the  idea  of 
losing  her  friend. 

When,  the  next  day,  Sylvia  faced  Michael  for  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  marriage,  she  was  quite  sure  not  merely  that 
he  had  never  attracted  her,  but  even  that  she  hated  him 
and,  what  was  more  deadly,  despised  him.  She  taunted 
him  with  wishing  to  marry  Lily  for  purely  sentimental 
reasons,  for  the  gratification  of  a  morbid  desire  to  save  her. 
She  remembered  Philip,  and  all  the  hatred  she  had  felt  for 
Philip's  superiority  was  transferred  to  Michael.  She  called 
him  a  prig  and  made  him  wince  by  speaking  of  Lily  and 
herself  as  "tarts,"  exacting  from  the  word  the  uttermost 
tribute  of  its  vulgarity.  She  dwelt  on  Lily's  character  and 
evolved  a  theory  of  woman's  ownership  by  man  that  drove 
her  into  such  illogical  arguments  and  exaggerated  preten- 
sions that  Michael  had  some  excuse  for  calling  her  hysteri- 
cal. The  dispute  left  Lily  on  one  side  for  a  time  and 
became  personal  to  herself  and  him.  He  told  her  she  was 
jealous.  In  an  access  of  outraged  pride  she  forgot  that  he 
was  referring  to  her  jealousy  about  Lily,  and  to  any  one 
less  obsessed  by  an  idea  than  he  was  she  would  have 
revealed  her  secret.  Suddenly  he  seemed  to  give  way. 
When  he  was  going  he  told  her  that  she  hated  him  because 
he  loved  Lily  and  hated  him  twice  as  much  because  his 
love  was  returned. 

Sylvia  felt  she  would  go  mad  when  Michael  said  that  he 
loved  Lily;  but  he  was  thinking  it  was  because  Lily  loved 
him  that  she  was  biting  her  nails  and  glaring  at  him.  Then 
he  asked  her  what  college  at  Oxford  her  husband  had  been 
at.  She  had  spoken  of  Philip  during  their  quarrel.  This 
abrupt  linking  of  himself  with  Philip  restored  her  balance, 
and  coolly  she  began  to  arrange  in  her  mind  for  Lily's 
withdrawal  from  London  for  a  while.  Of  passion  and  fury 
there  was  nothing  left  except  a  calm  determination  to  dis- 
appoint Master  Michael.  She  remembered  Olive  Fan- 
shawe's,  "Like  ice,  dear,  she  was  like  a  block  of  ice."  She, 
too,  was  like  a  block  of  ice  as  she  watched  him  walking 
away  down  the  long  garden. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  247 

When  Michael  had  gone  Sylvia  told  Lily  that  marriage 
with  him  was  impossible. 

"Why  do  you  want  to  be  married?"  she  demanded. 
"Was  your  mother  so  happy  in  her  marriage?  I  tell  you, 
child,  that  marriage  is  almost  inconceivably  dull.  What 
have  you  got  in  common  with  him?  Nothing,  absolutely 
nothing.'* 

"I'm  not  a  bit  anxious  to  be  married,"  Lily  protested. 
"But  when  somebody  goes  on  and  on  asking,  it  s  so  diffi- 
cult to  refuse.  I  liked  Claude  better  than  I  like  Michael. 
But  Claude  had  to  think  about  his  future." 

"And  what  about  your  future?"  Sylvia  exclaimed. 

"Oh,  I  expect  it  '11  be  all  right.     Michael  has  money." 

"I  say  you  shall  not  marry  him,"  Sylvia  almost 
shouted. 

"Oh,  don't  keep  on  so,"  Lily  fretfully  implored.  "It 
gives  me  a  headache.  I  won't  marry  him  if  it's  going  to 
upset  you  so  much.  But  you  mustn't  leave  me  alone  with 
him  again,  because  he  worries  me  just  as  much  as  you  do." 

"We'll  go  away  to-morrow,"  Sylvia  announced,  ab- 
ruptly. It  flashed  upon  her  that  she  would  like  to  go  to 
Sirene  with  Lily,  but,  alas!  there  was  not  enough  money 
for  such  a  long  journey,  and  Bournemouth  or  Brighton 
must  be  the  colorless  substitute. 

Lily  cheered  up  at  the  idea  of  going  away,  and  Sylvia 
was  half  resentful  that  she  could  accept  parting  from 
Michael  so  easily.  Lily's  frocks  were  not  ready  the  next 
day,  and  in  the  morning  Michael's  ring  was  heard. 

"Oh,  now  I  suppose  we  shall  have  more  scenes,"  Lily 
complained. 

Sylvia  ran  after  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  who  was  waddling 
down  the  garden  path  to  open  the  door. 

"Come  back,  come  back  at  once!"  she  cried.  "You're 
not  to  open  the  door." 

"Well,  there's  a  nice  thing.    But  it  may  be  the  butcher." 

"We  don't  want  any  meat.  It's  not  the  butcher.  It's 
Fane.  You're  not  to  open  the  door.  We've  all  gone 
away." 

"Well,  don't  snap  my  head  off,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough, 
turning  back  unwillingly  to  the  house. 

All  day  long  at  intervals  the  bell  rang. 


248  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"The  neighbors  '11  think  the  house  is  on  fire,"  Mrs. 
Gainsborough  bewailed. 

"Nobody  hears  it  except  ourselves,  you  silly  old  thing," 
Sylvia  said. 

"And  what  '11  the  passers-by  think?"  Mrs.  Gainsbor- 
ough asked.  "It  looks  so  funny  to  see  any  one  standing 
outside  a  door,  ringing  all  day  long  like  a  chimney-sweep 
who's  come  on  Monday  instead  of  Tuesday.  Let  me  go 
out  and  tell  him  you've  gone  away.  I'll  hold  the  door  on 
the  jar,  the  same  as  if  I  was  arguing  with  a  hawker.  Now 
be  sensible,  Sylvia.  I'll  just  pop  out,  pop  my  head  round 
the  door,  and  pop  back  in  again." 

"You're  not  to  go.    Sit  down." 

"You  do  order  any  one  about  so.  I  might  be  a  serviette, 
the  way  you  crumple  me  up.  Sylvia,  don't  keep  prodding 
into  me.  I  may  be  fat,  but  I  have  got  some  feelings  left. 
You're  a  regular  young  spiteful.  A  porter  wouldn't  treat 
luggage  so  rough.  Give  over,  Sylvia." 

"What  a  fuss  you  make  about  nothing!"  Sylvia  said. 

"Well,  that  ping-ping-pinging  gets  on  my  nerves.  I 
feel  as  if  I  were  coming  out  in  black  spots  like  a  domino. 
Why  don't  the  young  fellow  give  over?  It's  a  wonder  his 
fingers  aren't  worn  out." 

The  ringing  continued  until  nearly  midnight  in  bursts  of 
half  an  hour  at  a  stretch.  Next  morning  Sylvia  received  a 
note  from  Fane  in  which  he  invited  her  to  be  sporting  and 
let  him  see  Lily. 

"How  I  hate  that  kind  of  gentlemanly  attitude!"  she 
scoffed  to  herself. 

Sylvia  wrote  as  unpleasant  a  letter  as  she  could  invent, 
which  she  left  with  Mrs.  Gainsborough  to  be  given  to 
Michael  when  he  should  call  in  answer  to  an  invitation  she 
had  posted  for  the  following  day  at  twelve  o'clock.  Then 
Lily  and  she  left  for  Brighton.  All  the  way  down  in  the 
train  she  kept  wondering  why  she  had  ended  her  letter  to 
Michael  by  calling  him  "my  little  Vandyck."  Suddenly 
she  flew  into  a  rage  with  herself,  because  she  knew  that  she 
was  making  such  speculation  an  excuse  to  conjure  his 
image  to  her  mind. 

Toward  the  end  of  February  Sylvia  and  Lily  came  back 
to  Mulberry  Cottage.  Sylvia  had  awakened  one  morning 


Sylvia    Scarlett  249 

with  the  conviction  that  it  was  beneath  her  dignity  to 
interfere  further  between  Lily  and  Michael.  She  deter- 
mined to  leave  everything  to  fate.  She  would  go  and  stay 
with  Olive  for  a  while,  and  if  Lily  went  away  with  Michael, 
so  much  the  better.  To  hell  with  both  of  them.  This 
resolution  once  taken,  Sylvia,  who  had  been  rather  charm- 
ing to  Lily  all  the  time  at  Brighton,  began  now  to  treat  her 
with  a  contempt  that  was  really  an  expression  of  the  con- 
tempt she  felt  for  Michael.  A  week  after  their  return  to 
London  she  spent  the  whole  of  one  day  in  ridiculing  him 
so  cruelly  that  even  Mrs.  Gainsborough  protested.  Then 
she  was  seized  with  an  access  of  penitence,  and,  clasping 
Lily  to  her,  she  almost  entreated  her  to  vow  that  she  loved 
her  better  than  any  one  else  in  the  world.  Lily,  however, 
was  by  this  time  thoroughly  sulky  and  would  have  nothing 
to  do  with  Sylvia's  tardy  sweetness.  The  petulant  way  in 
which  she  shook  herself  free  from  the  embrace  at  last 
brought  Sylvia  up  to  the  point  of  leaving  Lily  to  herself. 
She  should  go  and  stay  with  Olive  Fanshawe,  and  if,  when 
she  came  back,  Lily  were  still  at  Mulberry  Cottage,  she 
would  atone  for  the  way  she  had  treated  her  lately;  if  she 
were  gone,  it  would  be  only  one  more  person  ruthlessly  cut 
out  of  her  life.  It  was  curious  to  think  of  everybody — 
Monkley,  Philip,  the  Organs,  Mabel,  the  twins,  Miss  Ash- 
ley, Dorward,  all  going  on  with  their  lives  at  this  moment 
regardless  of  her. 

"I  might  just  as  well  be  dead,"  she  told  herself.  "What 
a  fuss  people  make  about  death!" 

Sylvia  was  shocked  to  find  how  much  Olive  had  suffered 
from  Dorothy's  treatment  of  her.  For  the  first  time  in  her 
life  she  was  unable  to  dispose  of  emotion  as  mere  romantic 
or  sentimental  rubbish;  there  was  indeed  something 
deeper  than  the  luxury  of  grief  that  could  thus  ennoble 
even  a  Vanity  girl. 

"I  do  try,  Sylvia,  not  to  mope  all  the  time.  I  keep  on 
telling  myself  that,  if  I  really  loved  Dorothy,  I  should  be 
glad  for  her  to  be  Countess  of  Clarehaven,  with  everything 
that  she  wants.  She  was  always  a  good  girl.  I  lived  with 
her  more  than  two  years  and  she  was  frightfully  strict 
about  men.  She  deserved  to  be  a  countess.  And  I'm  sure 
she's  quite  right  in  wanting  to  cut  herself  off  altogether 


250  Sylvia    Scarlett 

from  the  theater.  I  think,  you  know,  she  may  have  meant 
to  be  kind  in  telling  me  at  once  like  that,  instead  of 
gradually  dropping  me,  which  would  have  been  worse, 
wouldn't  it  ?  Only  I  do  miss  her  so.  She  was  such  a  lovely 
thing  to  look  at." 

"So  are  you,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Ah,  but  I'm  dark,  dear,  and  a  dark  girl  never  has  that 
almost  unearthly  beauty  that  Dolly  had." 

"Dark  girls  have  often  something  better  than  unearthly 
and  seraphic  beauty,"  Sylvia  said.  "They  often  have  a 
gloriously  earthly  and  human  faithfulness." 

"Ah,  you  need  to  tease  me  about  being  romantic,  but  I 
think  it's  you  that's  being  romantic  now.  You  were  quite 
right,  dear;  I  used  to  be  stupidly  romantic  over  foolish 
little  things  without  any  importance,  and  now  it  all  seems 
such  a  waste  of  time.  That's  really  what  I  feel  most  of  all, 
now  that  I've  lost  my  friend.  It  seems  to  me  that  every 
time  I  patted  a  dog  I  was  wasting  time." 

Sylvia  had  a  fleeting  thought  that  perhaps  Gladys  and 
Enid  Worsley  might  have  felt  like  that  about  her,  but  in  a 
moment  she  quenched  the  fire  it  kindled  in  her  heart. 
She  was  not  going  to  bask  in  the  warmth  of  self-pity  like  a 
spoiled  little  girl  that  hopes  she  may  die  to  punish  her 
brother  for  teasing  her. 

"I  think,  you  know,"  Olive  went  on,  "that  girls  like  us 
aren't  prepared  to  stand  sorrow.  We've  absolutely  noth- 
ing to  fall  back  upon.  I've  been  thinking  all  these  days 
what  an  utterly  unsatisfactory  thing  lunch  at  Romano's 
really  is.  The  only  thing  in  my  life  that  I  can  look  back  to 
for  comfort  is  summer  at  the  convent  in  Belgium.  Of 
course  we  giggled  all  the  time;  but  all  the  noise  of  talking 
had  died  away,  and  I  can  only  see  a  most  extraordinary 
peacefulness.  I  wonder  if  the  nuns  would  have  me  as  a 
boarder  for  a  little  while  this  summer.  I  feel  I  absolutely 
must  go  there.  It  isn't  being  sentimental,  because  I  never 
knew  Dorothy  in  those  days." 

Perhaps  Olive's  regret  for  her  lost  friend  affected  Sylvia. 
When  she  went  back  to  Mulberry  Cottage  and  found  that 
Lily  had  gone  away,  notwithstanding  her  own  deliberate 
provocation  of  the  elopement,  she  was  dismayed.  There 
was  nothing  left  of  Lily  but  two  old  frocks  in  the  wardrobe, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  251 

two  old  frocks  the  color  of  dead  leaves;  and  this  poignant 
reminder  of  a  physical  loss  drove  out  all  the  other  emotions. 
She  told  herself  that  it  was  ridiculous  to  be  moved  like  this 
and  she  jeered  at  herself  for  imitating  Olive's  grief.  But 
it  was  no  use;  those  two  frocks  affrighted  her  courage  with 
their  deadness.  No  kind  of  communion  after  marriage 
would  compensate  for  the  loss  of  Lily's  presence;  it  was 
like  the  fading  of  a  flower  in  the  completeness  of  its  death. 
Even  if  she  had  been  able  to  achieve  the  selflessness  of 
Olive  and  take  delight  in  Lily's  good  fortune,  how  impossi- 
ble it  was  to  believe  in  the  triumph  of  this  marriage.  Lily 
would  either  be  bored  or  she  would  become  actively  miser- 
able— Sylvia  snorted  at  the  adverb — and  run  away  or 
rather  slowly  melt  to  damnation.  It  would  not  even  be 
necessary  for  her  to  be  miserable;  any  unscrupulous  friend 
of  her  husband's  would  have  his  way  with  her.  For  an 
instant  Sylvia  had  a  tremor  of  compassion  for  Michael, 
but  it  died  in  the  thought  of  how  such  a  disillusion  would 
serve  him  right.  He  had  built  up  this  passion  out  of 
sentimentality;  he  was  like  Don  Quixote;  he  was  stupid. 
No  doubt  he  had  managed  by  now  to  fall  in  love  with  Lily, 
but  it  had  never  been  an  inevitable  passion,  and  no  pity 
should  be  shown  to  lovers  that  did  not  love  wildly  at  first 
sight.  They  alone  could  plead  fate's  decrees. 

Jack  Airdale  came  to  see  Sylvia,  and  he  took  advantage 
of  her  despair  to  press  his  desire  for  her  to  go  upon  the 
stage.  He  was  positive  that  she  had  in  her  the  makings  of 
a  great  actress.  He  did  not  want  to  talk  about  himself, 
but  he  must  tell  Sylvia  that  there  was  a  wonderful  joy  in 
getting  on.  He  would  never,  of  course,  do  anything  very 
great,  but  he  was  understudy  to  some  one  or  other  at  some 
theater  or  other,  and  there  was  always  a  chance  of  really 
showing  what  he  could  do  one  night  or  at  any  rate  one 
afternoon.  Even  Claude  was  getting  on;  he  had  met  him 
the  other  day  in  a  tail  coat  and  a  top-hat.  Since  there  had 
been  such  an  outcry  against  tubercular  infection,  he  had 
been  definitely  cured  of  his  tendency  toward  consumption; 
he  had  nothing  but  neurasthenia  to  contend  with  now. 

But  Sylvia  would  not  let  Jack  "speak  about  her"  to  the 
managers  he  knew.  She  had  no  intention  of  continuing  as 
she  was  at  present,  but  she  should  wait  till  she  was  twenty- 


252  Sylvia    Scarlett 

three  before  she  took  any  step  that  would  involve  anything 
more  energetic  than  turning  over  the  pages  of  a  book; 
she  intended  to  dream  away  the  three  months  that  were 
left  to  twenty-two.  Jack  Airdale  went  away  discouraged. 

Sylvia  met  Ronald  Walker,  who  had  painted  Lily. 
From  him  she  learned  that  Fane  had  taken  a  house  for  her 
somewhere  near  Regent's  Park.  By  a  curious  coincidence, 
a  great  friend  of  his  who  was  also  a  friend  of  Fane's  had 
helped  to  acquire  the  house.  Ronald  understood  that 
there  was  considerable  feeling  against  the  marriage  among 
Fane's  friends.  What  was  Fane  like?  He  knew  several 
men  who  knew  him,  and  he  seemed  to  be  one  of  those 
people  about  whose  affairs  everybody  talked. 

"Thank  Heaven,  nobody  bothers  about  me,"  said 
Ronald.  "This  man  Fane  seems  to  have  money  to  throw 
about.  I  wish  he'd  buy  my  picture  of  Lily.  You're  look- 
ing rather  down,  Sylvia.  I  suppose  you  miss  her?  By 
Jove!  what  an  amazing  sitter!  She  wasn't  really  beauti- 
ful, you  know — I  mean  to  say  with  the  kind  of  beauty  that 
lives  outside  its  setting.  I  don't  quite  mean  that,  but  in 
my  picture  of  her,  which  most  people  consider  the  best 
thing  I've  done,  she  never  gave  me  what  I  ought  to  have 
had  from  such  a  model.  I  felt  cheated,  somehow,  as  if  I'd 
cut  a  bough  from  a  tree  and  in  doing  so  destroyed  all  its 
grace.  It  was  her  gracefulness  really;  and  dancing's  the 
only  art  for  that.  I  can't  think  why  I  didn't  paint  you." 

"You're  not  going  to  begin  now,"  Sylvia  assured  him. 

"Well,  of  course,  now  you  challenge  me,"  he  laughed. 
"The  fact  is,  Sylvia,  I've  never  really  seen  you  in  repose  till 
this  moment.  You  were  always  tearing  around  and  talk- 
ing. Look  here,  I  do  want  to  paint  you.  I  say,  let  me 
paint  you  in  this  room  with  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  By  Jove! 
I  see  exactly  what  I  want." 

"It  sounds  as  if  you  wanted  an  illustration  for  the  Old 
and  New  Year,"  Sylvia  said. 

In  the  end,  however,  she  gave  way;  and  really,  it  passed 
the  time,  sitting  for  Ronald  Walker  with  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough in  that  room  where  nothing  of  Lily  remained. 

"Well,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  declared,  when  the  painter 
had  finished.  "I  knew  I  was  fat,  but  really  it's  enough  to 
make  any  one  get  out  of  breath  just  to  look  at  any  one  so 


Sylvia    Scarlett  253 

fat  as  you've  made  me.  He  hasn't  been  stingy  with  his 
paint,  I'll  say  that.  But  really,  you  know,  it  looks  like  a 
picture  of  the  fat  woman  in  a  fair.  Now  Sylvia's  very  good. 
Just  the  way  she  looks  at  you  with  her  chin  stuck  out  like  a 
step-ladder.  Your  eyes  are  very  good,  too.  He's  just  got 
that  nasty  glitter  you  get  into  them  sometimes." 

One  day  in  early  June,  without  any  warning,  Michael 
Fane  revisited  Mulberry  Cottage.  Sylvia  had  often  de- 
claimed against  him  to  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  and  now  while 
they  walked  up  the  garden  she  could  see  that  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough was  nervous,  and  by  the  way  that  Michael  walked 
either  that  he  was  nervous  or  that  something  had  hap- 
pened. Sylvia  came  down  the  steps  from  the  balcony  to 
meet  them,  and,  reading  in  his  countenance  that  he  had 
come  to  ask  her  help,  she  was  aware  of  an  immense  relief, 
which  she  hid  under  an  attitude  of  cold  hostility.  They  sat 
on  the  garden  seat  under  the  budding  mulberry-tree,  and 
without  any  preliminaries  of  conversation  Michael  told  her 
that  he  and  Lily  had  parted.  Sylvia  resented  an  implica- 
tion in  his  tone  that  she  would  somehow  be  awed  by  this 
announcement;  she  felt  bitterly  anxious  to  disappoint  and 
humiliate  him  by  her  indifference,  hoping  that  he  would 
beg  her  to  get  Lily  back  for  him.  Instead  of  this  he  spoke 
of  putting  her  out  of  his  life,  and  Sylvia  perceived  that  it 
was  not  at  all  to  get  Lily  back  that  he  had  come  to  her. 
She  was  angry  at  missing  her  opportunity  and  she  jeered 
at  the  stately  way  in  which  he  confessed  his  failure  and  his 
loss;  nor  would  he  wince  when  she  mocked  his  romantic 
manner  of  speech.  At  last  she  was  almost  driven  into  the 
brutality  of  picturing  in  unforgivable  words  the  details  of 
Lily's  infidelity,  but  from  this  he  flinched,  stopping  her 
with  a  gesture.  He  went  on  to  give  Sylvia  full  credit  for 
her  victory,  to  grant  that  she  had  been  right  from  the  first, 
and  gradually  by  dwelling  on  the  one  aspect  of  Lily  that 
was  common  to  both  of  them,  her  beauty,  he  asked  her 
very  gently  to  take  Lily  back  to  live  with  her  again. 
Sylvia  could  not  refrain  from  sneers,  and  he  was  stung  into 
another  allusion  to  her  jealousy,  which  Sylvia  set  out  to 
disprove  almost  mathematically,  though  all  the  time  she 
was  afraid  of  what  clear  perception  he  might  not  have 
attained  through  sorrow.  But  he  was  still  obsessed  by  the 


254  Sylvia    Scarlett 

salvation  of  Lily;  and  Sylvia,  because  she  could  forgive 
him  for  his  indifference  to  her  own  future  except  so  far  as 
it  might  help  Lily,  began  to  mock  at  herself,  to  accuse 
herself  for  those  three  months  after  she  left  Philip,  to  rake 
up  that  corpse  from  its  burial-place  so  that  this  youth  who 
troubled  her  very  soul  might  turn  his  face  from  her  in 
irremediable  disgust  and  set  her  free  from  the  spell  he  was 
unaware  of  casting. 

When  she  had  worn  herself  out  with  the  force  of  her 
denunciation  both  of  herself  and  of  mankind,  he  came  back 
to  his  original  request;  Sylvia,  incapable  of  struggling 
further,  yielded  to  his  perseverance,  but  with  a  final 
flicker  of  self-assertion  she  begged  him  not  to  suppose  that 
she  was  agreeing  to  take  Lily  back  for  any  other  reason 
than  because  she  wanted  to  please  herself. 

Michael  began  to  ask  her  about  Lily's  relation  to  certain 
men  with  whom  he  had  heard  her  name  linked — with 
Ronald  Walker,  and  with  Lonsdale,  whom  he  had  known 
at  Oxford.  Sylvia  told  him  the  facts  quite  simply;  and 
then  because  she  could  not  bear  this  kind  of  self-torture  he 
was  inflicting  on  himself,  she  tried  to  put  out  of  its  agony 
his  last  sentimental  regret  for  Lily  by  denying  to  her  and 
by  implication  to  herself  also  the  justification  even  of  a  free 
choice. 

"Money  is  necessary  sometimes,  you  know,"  she  said. 

Sylvia  expected  he  would  recoil  from  this,  but  he  ac- 
cepted it  as  the  statement  of  a  natural  fact,  agreed  with 
its  truth,  and  begged  that  in  the  future  if  ever  money 
should  be  necessary  he  should  be  given  the  privilege  of 
helping.  So  long  as  it  was  apparently  only  Lily  whom  he 
desired  to  help  thus,  Michael  had  put  forward  his  claims 
easily  enough.  Then  in  a  flash  Sylvia  felt  that  now  he  was 
transferring  half  his  interest  in  Lily  to  her.  He  was 
stumbling  hopelessly  over  that;  he  was  speaking  in  a  shy 
way  of  sending  her  books  that  she  would  enjoy;  then 
abruptly  he  had  turned  from  her  and  the  garden  door  had 
slammed  behind  him.  It  was  with  a  positive  exultation 
that  Sylvia  realized  that  he  had  forgotten  to  give  her  Lily's 
address  and  that  it  was  the  dread  of  seeming  to  intrude 
upon  her  which  had  driven  him  away  like  that.  She  ran 
after  him  and  called  him  back.  He  gave  her  a  visiting-card 


Sylvia    Scarlett  255 

on  which  his  name  was  printed  above  the  address;  it  was 
like  a  little  tombstone  of  his  dead  love.  He  was  talking 
now  about  selling  the  furniture  and  sending  the  money  to 
Lily.  Sylvia  all  the  time  was  wondering  why  the  first  man 
that  had  ever  appealed  to  her  in  the  least  should  be  like 
the  famous  hero  of  literature  that  had  always  bored  her. 
With  an  impulse  to  avenge  Michael  she  asked  the  name  of 
the  man  for  whom  Lily  had  betrayed  him.  But  he  had 
never  known;  he  had  only  seen  his  hat. 

Sylvia  pulled  Michael  to  her  and  kissed  him  with  the 
first  kiss  she  had  given  to  any  man  that  was  not  contempt- 
uous either  of  him  or  of  herself. 

"How  many  women  have  kissed  you  suddenly  like 
that?"  she  asked. 

"One — well,  perhaps  two!"  he  answered. 

Even  this  kiss  of  hers  was  not  hers  alone,  but  because 
she  might  never  see  him  again  Sylvia  broke  the  barrier  of 
jealousy  and  in  a  sudden  longing  to  be  prodigal  of  herself 
for  once  she  gave  him  all  she  could,  her  pride,  by  letting 
him  know  that  she  for  her  part  had  never  kissed  any  man 
like  that  before. 

Sylvia  went  back  to  the  seat  under  the  mulberry-tree 
and  made  up  her  mind  that  the  time  was  ripe  for  activity 
again.  She  had  allowed  herself  to  become  the  prey  of 
emotion  by  leading  this  indeterminate  life  in  which  sensa- 
tion was  cultivated  at  the  expense  of  incident.  It  was  a 
pity  that  Michael  had  intrusted  her  with  Lily,  for  at  this 
moment  she  would  have  liked  to  be  away  out  of  it  at  once; 
any  adventure  embarked  upon  with  Lily  would  always 
be  bounded  by  her  ability  to  pack  in  time.  Sylvia  could 
imagine  how  those  two  dresses  she  had  left  behind  must 
have  been  the  most  insuperable  difficulty  of  the  elopement. 
Another  objection  to  Lily's  company  now  was  the  way  in 
which  it  would  repeatedly  remind  her  of  Michael. 

"Of  course  it  won't  remind  me  sentimentally,"  Sylvia 
assured  herself.  "I'm  not  such  a  fool  as  to  suppose  that 
I'm  going  to  suffer  from  a  sense  of  personal  loss.  On  the 
other  hand,  I  sha'n't  ever  be  able  to  forget  what  an 
exaggerated  impression  I  gave  him.  It's  really  perfectly 
damnable  to  divine  one's  sympathy  with  a  person,  to  know 
that  one  could  laugh  together  through  life,  and  by  circum- 

17 


256  Sylvia    Scarlett 

stances  to  have  been  placed  in  an  utterly  abnormal  relation 
to  him.  It  really  is  damnable.  He'll  think  of  me,  if  he 
ever  thinks  of  me  at  all,  as  one  of  the  great  multitude  of 
wronged  women.  I  shall  think  of  him — though  as  a  matter 
of  fact  I  shall  avoid  thinking  of  him — either  as  what  might 
have  been,  a  false  concept,  for  of  course  what  might  have 
been  is  fundamentally  inconceivable,  or  as  what  he  was,  a 
sentimental  fool.  However,  the  mere  fact  that  I'm  sitting 
here  bothering  my  head  about  what  either  of  us  thinks 
shows  that  I  need  a  change  of  air." 

That  afternoon  a  parcel  of  books  arrived  for  Sylvia  from 
Michael  Fane;  among  them  was  Skelton's  Don  Quixote 
and  Adlington's  Apuleius,  on  the  fly-leaf  of  which  he  had 
written: 

I've  eaten  rose  leaves  and  I  am  no  longer  a  golden  ass. 

"No,  damn  his  eyes!"  said  Sylvia.  "I'm  the  ass  now. 
And  how  odd  that  he  should  send  me  Don  Quixote" 

At  twilight  Sylvia  went  to  see  Lily  at  Ararat  House. 
She  found  her  in  a  strange  rococo  room  that  opened  on  a 
garden  bordered  by  the  Regent's  Canal;  here  amid  can- 
dles and  mirrors  she  was  sitting  in  conversation  with  her 
housekeeper.  Each  of  them  existed  from  every  point  of 
view  and  infinitely  reduplicated  in  the  mirrors,  which  was 
not  favorable  to  toleration  of  the  housekeeper's  figure, 
that  was  like  an  hour-glass.  Sylvia  waited  coldly  for  her 
withdrawal  before  she  acknowledged  Lily's  greeting.  At 
last  the  objectionable  creature  rose  and,  accompanied  by  a 
crowd  of  reflections,  left  the  room. 

"Don't  lecture  me,"  Lily  begged.  "I  had  the  most 
awful  time  yesterday." 

"But  Michael  said  he  had  not  seen  you." 

"Oh,  not  with  Michael,"  Lily  exclaimed.  "With 
Claude." 

"With  Claude?"  Sylvia  echoed. 

"Yes,  he  came  to  see  me  and  left  his  hat  in  the  hall  and 
Michael  took  it  away  with  him  in  his  rage.  It  was  the  only 
top-hat  he'd  got,  and  he  had  an  engagement  for  an  'at 
home,'  and  he  couldn't  go  out  in  the  sun,  and,  oh  dear,  you 
never  heard  such  a  fuss,  and  when  Mabel — " 


Sylvia    Scarlett  257 

"  Mabel?" 

" — Miss  Harper,  my  housekeeper,  offered  to  go  out  and 
buy  him  another,  he  was  livid  with  fury.  He  asked  if  I 
thought  he  was  made  of  money  and  could  buy  top-hats 
like  matches.  I'm  glad  you've  come.  Michael  has  broken 
off  the  engagement,  and  I  expected  you  rather.  A  friend 
of  his — rather  a  nice  boy  called  Maurice  Avery — is  coming 
round  this  evening  to  arrange  about  selling  everything.  I 
shall  have  quite  a  lot  of  money.  Let's  go  away  and  be 
quiet  after  all  this  bother  and  fuss." 

"Look  here,"  Sylvia  said.  "Before  we  go  any  further 
I  want  to  know  one  thing.  Is  Claude  going  to  drop  in  and 
out  of  your  life  at  critical  moments  for  the  rest  of  time?" 

"Oh  no!  We've  quarreled  now.  He'll  never  forgive  me 
over  the  hat.  Besides,  he  puts  some  stuff  on  his  hair  now 
that  I  don't  like.  Sylvia,  do  come  and  look  at  my  frocks. 
I've  got  some  really  lovely  frocks." 

Maurice  Avery,  to  whom  Sylvia  took  an  instant  dislike, 
came  in  presently.  He  seemed  to  attribute  the  ruin  of  his 
friend's  hopes  entirely  to  a  failure  to  take  his  advice: 

"Of  course  this  was  the  wrong  house  to  start  with.  I 
advised  him  to  take  one  at  Hampstead,  but  he  wouldn't 
listen  to  me.  The  fact  is  Michael  doesn't  understand 
women." 

"Do  you?"  Sylvia  snapped. 

Avery  looked  at  her  a  moment,  and  said  he  understood 
them  better  than  Michael. 

"Of  course  nobody  can  ever  really  understand  a  wom- 
an," he  added,  with  an  instinct  of  self-protection.  "But 
I  advised  him  not  to  leave  Lily  alone.  I  told  him  it  wasn't 
fair  to  her  or  to  himself." 

"Did  you  give  him  any  advice  about  disposing  of  the 
furniture?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Well,  I'm  arranging  about  that  now." 

"Sorry,"  said  Sylvia.  "I  thought  you  were  paving 
Michael's  past  with  your  own  good  intentions." 

"You  mustn't  take  any  notice  of  her,"  Lily  told  Avery, 
who  was  looking  rather  mortified.  "She's  rude  to  every- 
body." 

"Well,  shall  I  tell  you  my  scheme  for  clearing  up  here?" 
he  asked. 


258  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"If  it  will  bring  us  any  nearer  to  business,"  Sylvia 
answered,  "we'll  manage  to  support  the  preliminary 
speech." 

A  week  or  two  later  Avery  handed  Lily  £270,  which  she 
immediately  transferred  to  Sylvia's  keeping. 

"I  kept  the  Venetian  mirror  for  myself,"  Avery  said. 
"You  know  the  one  with  the  jolly  little  cupids  in  pink  and 
blue  glass.  I  shall  always  think  of  you  and  Ararat  House 
when  I  look  at  myself  in  it." 

"I  suppose  all  your  friends  wear  their  hearts  on  your 
sleeve,"  Sylvia  said.  "That  must  add  a  spice  to  vanity." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  very  much  upset  at  the  prospect 
of  the  girls'  going  away. 

"That  comes  of  having  me  picture  painted.  I  felt  it 
was  unlucky  when  he  was  doing  it.  Oh,  dearie  me!  what- 
ever shall  I  do?" 

"Come  with  us,"  Sylvia  suggested.  "We're  going  to 
France.  Lock  up  your  house,  give  the  key  to  the  copper 
on  the  beat,  put  on  your  gingham  gown,  and  come  with 
us,  you  old  sea-elephant." 

"Come  with  you?"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  gasped.  "But 
there,  why  shouldn't  I?" 

"No  reason  at  all." 

"Why,  then  I  will.  I  believe  the  captain  would  have 
liked  me  to  get  a  bit  of  a  blow." 

"Anything  to  declare?"  the  customs  official  asked  at 
Boulogne. 

"I  declare  I'm  enjoying  myself,"  said  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough, looking  round  her  and  beaming  at  France. 


CHAPTER  X 

WHEN  she  once  more  landed  on  French  soil,  Sylvia, 
actuated  by  a  classic  piety,  desired  to  visit  her 
mother's  grave.  She  would  have  preferred  to  go  to 
Lille  by  herself,  for  she  lacked  the  showman's  instinct; 
but  her  companions  were  so  horrified  at  the  notion  of 
being  left  to  themselves  in  Paris  until  she  rejoined  them, 
that  in  the  end  she  had  to  take  them  with  her. 

The  sight  of  the  old  house  and  the  faces  of  some  of  the 
older  women  in  the  quartier  conjured  up  the  past  so  vividly 
for  Sylvia  that  she  could  not  bring  herself  to  make  any 
inquiries  about  the  rest  of  her  family.  It  seemed  as  if  she 
must  once  more  look  at  Lille  from  her  mother's  point  of 
view  and  maintain  the  sanctity  of  private  life  against  the 
curiosity  or  criticism  of  neighbors.  She  did  not  wish  to 
hear  the  details  of  her  father's  misdoing  or  perhaps  be 
condoled  with  over  Valentine.  The  simplest  procedure 
would  have  been  to  lay  a  wreath  upon  the  grave  and  depart 
again.  This  she  might  have  done  if  Mrs.  Gainsborough's 
genial  inquisitiveness  about  her  relatives  had  not  roused  in 
herself  a  wish  to  learn  something  about  them.  She  decided 
to  visit  her  eldest  sister  in  Brussels,  leaving  it  to  chance  if 
she  still  lived  where  Sylvia  had  visited  her  twelve  years  ago. 

"Brussels,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "Well,  that 
sounds  familiar,  anyway.  Though  I  suppose  the  sprout- 
gardens  are  all  built  over  nowadays.  Ah  dear!" 

The  building  over  of  her  father's  nursery-garden  and  of 
many  other  green  spots  she  had  known  in  London  always 
drew  a  tear  from  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  who  was  inclined  to 
attribute  most  of  human  sorrow  to  the  utilitarian  schemes 
of  builders. 

"Yes,  they  found  the  Belgian  hares  ate  up  all  the 
sprouts,"  Sylvia  said.  "And  talking  of  hair,"  she  went 
on,  "what's  the  matter  with  yours?" 


260  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Ah,  well,  there!  Now  I  meant  to  say  nothing  about 
it.  But  I've  left  me  mahogany  wash  at  home.  There's  a 
calamity!" 

"You'd  better  come  out  with  me  and  buy  another 
bottle,"  Sylvia  advised. 

"You'll  never  get  one  here,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough. 
"This  is  a  wash,  not  a  dye,  you  must  remember.  It 
doesn't  tint  the  hair;  it  just  brings  up  the  color  and  gives 
it  a  nice  gloss." 

"If  that's  all  it  does,  I'll  lend  you  my  shoe-polish.  Go 
along,  you  wicked  old  fraud,  and  don't  talk  to  me  about 
washes.  I  can  see  the  white  hairs  coming  out  like  stars." 

Sylvia  found  Elene  in  Brussels,  and  was  amazed  to  see 
how  much  she  resembled  her  mother  nowadays.  M. 
Durand,  her  husband,  had  prospered  and  he  now  owned  a 
large  confectioner's  shop  in  the  heart  of  the  city,  above 
which  Madame  Durand  had  started  a  pension  for  economi- 
cal tourists.  Mrs.  Gainsborough  could  not  get  over  the 
fact  that  her  hostess  did  not  speak  English;  it  struck  her 
as  unnatural  that  Sylvia  should  have  a  sister  who  could 
only  speak  French.  The  little  Durands  were  a  more  diffi- 
cult problem.  She  did  not  so  much  mind  feeling  awkward 
with  grown-up  people  through  having  to  sit  dumb,  but 
children  stared  at  her  so,  if  she  said  nothing;  and  if  she 
talked,  they  stared  at  her  still  more;  she  kept  feeling  that 
she  ought  to  stroke  them  or  pat  them,  which  might  offend 
their  mother.  She  found  ultimately  that  they  were  best 
amused  by  her  taking  out  two  false  teeth  she  had,  one  of 
which  once  was  lost,  because  the  eldest  boy  would  play 
dice  with  them. 

Elene  gave  Sylvia  news  of  the  rest  of  the  family,  though, 
since  all  the  four  married  sisters  were  in  different  towns  in 
France  and  she  had  seen  none  of  them  for  ten  years,  it  was 
not  very  fresh  news.  Valentine,  in  whose  career  Sylvia  was 
most  interested,  was  being  very  well  entretenue  by  a  marseil- 
lais  who  had  bought  her  an  apartment  that  included  a 
porcelain-tiled  bathroom;  she  might  be  considered  lucky, 
for  the  man  with  whom  she  had  left  Lille  had  been  a  rascal. 
It  happened  that  her  news  of  Valentine  was  fresh  and 
authentic,  because  a  lilleoise  who  lived  in  Bruxelles  had 
recently  been  obliged  to  go  to  Marseilles  over  some  legal 


Sylvia    Scarlett  261 

dispute  and,  meeting  Valentine,  had  been  invited  to  see 
her  apartment.  It  was  a  pity  that  she  was  not  married, 
but  her  position  was  the  next  best  thing  to  marriage.  Of 
the  Bassompierres  Elene  had  heard  nothing  for  years,  but 
what  would  interest  Sylvia  were  some  family  papers  and 
photographs  that  Sylvia's  father  had  sent  to  her  as  the 
eldest  daughter  when  their  mother  died,  together  with  an 
old-fashioned  photograph  of  their  grandmother.  From 
these  papers  it  seemed  that  an  English  milord  and  not  Bas- 
sompierre  had  really  been  their  grandfather.  Sylvia  being 
half  English  already,  it  might  not  interest  her  so  much, 
but  for  herself  to  know  she  had  English  blood  I'avait 
beaucoup  impressione,  so  many  English  tourists  came  to  her 
pension. 

Sylvia  looked  at  the  daguerreotype  of  her  grandmother, 
a  glass  faintly  bloomed,  the  likeness  of  a  ghost  indeed. 
She  then  had  loved  an  Englishman;  her  mother,  too;  her- 
self. .  .  .  Sylvia  packed  the  daguerreotype  out  of  sight 
and  turned  to  look  at  a  golden  shawl  of  a  material  rather 
like  crepe  de  Chine,  which  had  been  used  to  wrap  up  their 
mother  when  she  was  a  baby.  Would  Sylvia  like  it?  It 
was  no  use  to  Elene,  too  old  and  frail  and  faded.  Sylvia 
stayed  in  Brussels  for  a  week  and  left  with  many  promises 
to  return  soon.  She  was  glad  she  had  paid  the  visit;  for  it 
had  given  back  to  her  the  sense  of  continuity  which  in  the 
shifting  panorama  of  her  life  she  had  lost,  so  that  she  had 
come  to  regard  herself  as  an  unreal  person,  an  exception  in 
humanity,  an  emotional  freak;  this  separation  from  the 
rest  of  the  world  had  been  irksome  to  Sylvia  since  she  had 
discovered  the  possibility  of  her  falling  in  love,  because  it 
was  seeming  the  cause  of  her  not  being  loved.  Henceforth 
she  would  meet  man  otherwise  than  with  defiance  or 
accusation  in  her  eyes;  she,  too,  perhaps  would  meet  a 
lover  thus. 

Sylvia  folded  up  the  golden  shawl  to  put  it  at  the  bottom 
of  her  trunk;  figuratively,  she  wrapped  up  in  it  her 
memories,  tender,  gay,  sorrowful,  vile  all  together. 

"Soon  be  in  Paris,  shall  we?"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough, 
when  the  train  reached  the  eastern  suburbs.  "It  makes 
one  feel  quite  naughty,  doesn't  it?  The  captain  was 
always  going  to  take  me,  but  we  never  went,  somehow. 


262  Sylvia    Scarlett 

What's  that?  There's  the  Eiffel  Tower?  So  it  is,  upon 
my  word,  and  just  what  it  looks  like  in  pictures.  Not  a  bit 
different.  I  hope  it  won't  fall  down  while  we're  still  in 
Paris.  Nice  set-out  that  would  be.  I've  always  been 
afraid  of  sky  accidents  since  a  friend  of  mine,  a  Mrs. 
Ewings,  got  stuck  in  the  Great  Wheel  at  Earl's  Court  with 
a  man  who  started  undressing  himself.  It  was  all  right,  as 
it  happened,  because  he  only  wanted  to  wave  his  shirt  to 
his  wife,  who  was  waiting  for  him  down  below,  so  as  she 
shouldn't  get  anxious,  but  it  gave  Mrs.  Ewings  a  nasty 
turn.  Two  hours  she  was  stuck  with  nothing  in  her  bag 
but  a  box  of  little  liver  pills,  which  made  her  mouth 
water,  she  said,  she  was  that  hungry.  She  thinks  she'd 
have  eaten  them  if  she'd  have  been  alone;  but  the  man, 
who  was  an  undertaker  from  Wandsworth,  told  her  a  lot  of 
interesting  stories  about  corpses,  and  that  kept  her  mind 
occupied  till  the  wheel  started  going  round  again,  and  the 
Exhibition  gave  her  soup  and  ten  shillings  compensation, 
which  made  a  lot  of  people  go  up  in  it  on  the  chance  of 
being  stuck." 

It  was  strange,  Sylvia  thought,  that  she  should  be  as 
ignorant  of  Paris  as  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  but  somehow  the 
three  of  them  would  manage  to  enjoy  themselves.  Lily 
was  more  nearly  vivacious  than  she  had  ever  known  her. 

"Quite  saucy,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  vowed.  "  But  there, 
we're  all  young,  and  you  soon  get  used  to  the  funny  people 
you  see  in  France.  After  all,  they're  foreigners.  We  ought 
to  feel  sorry  for  them." 

"I  say  steady,  Mrs.  Gainsborough,"  Lily  murmured, 
with  a  frown.  "Some  of  these  people  in  the  carriage  may 
speak  English." 

"Speak  English?"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  repeated.  "You 
don't  mean  to  tell  me  they'd  go  on  jabbering  to  one  another 
in  French  if  they  could  speak  English!  What  an  idea!" 

A  young  man  who  had  got  into  the  compartment  at 
Chantilly  had  been  casting  glances  of  admiration  at  Lily 
ever  since,  and  it  was  on  account  of  him  that  she  had 
warned  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  He  was  a  slim,  dark  young 
man  dressed  by  an  English  tailor,  very  diffident  for  a 
Frenchman,  but  when  Sylvia  began  to  speculate  upon  the 
choice  of  a  hotel  he  could  no  longer  keep  silence  and  asked 


Sylvia    Scarlett  263 

in  English  if  he  could  be  of  any  help.  When  Sylvia  replied 
to  him  in  French,  he  was  much  surprised: 

"Mais  vous  etes  fran$ aise!" 

"  Je  suis  du  pays  de  la  lune"  Sylvia  said. 

"Now  don't  encourage  the  young  fellow  to  gabble  in 
French,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  protested.  "It  gives  me  the 
pins  and  needles  to  hear  you.  You  ought  to  encourage 
people  to  speak  English,  if  they  want  to,  I'm  sure." 

The  young  Frenchman  smiled  at  this  and  offered  his 
card  to  Sylvia,  whom  he  evidently  accepted  as  the  head  of 
the  party.  She  read,  "Hector  Ozanne,"  and  smiled  for 
the  heroic  first  name;  somehow  he  did  not  look  like  Hector 
and  because  he  was  so  modest  she  presented  him  to  Lily  to 
make  him  happy. 

"I  am  enchanted  to  meet  a  type  of  English  beauty,"  he 
said.  "You  must  forgive  my  sincerity,  which  arises  only 
from  admiration.  Madame,"  he  went  on,  turning  to  Mrs. 
Gainsborough,  "I  am  honored  to  meet  you." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough,  who  was  not  quite  sure  how  to  deal 
with  such  politeness,  became  flustered  and  dropped  her 
bag.  Ozanne  and  she  both  plunged  for  it  simultaneously 
and  bumped  their  heads;  upon  this  painful  salute  a  general 
friendliness  was  established. 

"I  am  a  bachelor,"  said  Ozanne.  "I  have  nothing  to 
occupy  myself,  and  if  I  might  be  permitted  to  assist  you  in 
a  research  for  an  apartment  I  shall  be  very  elated." 

Sylvia  decided  in  favor  of  rooms  on  the  rive  gauche. 
She  felt  it  was  a  conventional  taste,  but  held  to  her  opinion 
against  Ozanne's  objections. 

"  But  I  have  an  apartment  in  the  Rue  Montpensier,  with 
a  view  of  the  Palais  Royal.  I  do  not  live  there  now  myself. 
I  beseech  you  to  make  me  the  pleasure  to  occupy  it.  It  is 
so  very  good,  the  view  of  the  garden.  And  if  you  like  an 
ancient  house,  it  is  very  ancient.  Do  you  concur?" 

"And  where  will  you  go?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"I  live  always  in  my  club.  For  me  it  would  be  a  big 
advantage,  I  assure  you." 

"We  should  have  to  pay  rent,"  said  Sylvia,  quickly. 

"The  rent  will  be  one  thousand  a  year." 

"God  have  mercy  upon  us!"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  gasped. 
"A  thousand  a  year  ?  Why,  the  man  must  think  that  we're 


264  Sylvia    Scarlett 

the  royal  family  broken  out  from  Windsor  Castle  on  the 
randan." 

"Shut  up,  you  silly  old  thing,"  said  Sylvia.  "He's 
asking  nothing  at  all.  Francs,  not  pounds.  Vous  etes  trop 
gentil  pour  nous,  Monsieur" 

"  Alors,  c'est  entendu?" 

"Mais  oui" 

"Son!    Nous  y  irons  ensemble  tout  de  suite,  n'est-ce  pas?" 

The  apartment  was  really  charming.  From  the  win- 
dows one  could  see  the  priests  with  their  breviaries  mut- 
tering up  and  down  the  old  garden  of  the  Palais  Royal; 
and,  as  in  all  gardens  in  the  heart  of  a  great  city,  many 
sorts  of  men  and  women  were  resting  there  in  the  sun- 
light. Ozanne  invited  them  to  dine  with  him  that  night 
and  left  them  to  unpack. 

"Well,  I'm  bound  to  say  we  seem  to  have  fallen  on  our 
feet  right  off,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  said.  "I  shall  quite 
enjoy  myself  here;  I  can  see  that  already." 

The  acquaintance  with  Hector  Ozanne  ripened  into 
friendship,  and  from  friendship  his  passion  for  Lily  became 
obvious,  not  that  really  it  had  ever  been  anything  else, 
Sylvia  thought;  the  question  was  whether  it  should  be 
allowed  to  continue.  Sylvia  asked  Ozanne  his  intentions. 
He  declared  his  desperate  affection,  exclaimed  against  the 
iniquity  of  not  being  able  to  marry  on  account  of  a  mother 
from  whom  he  derived  his  entire  income,  stammered,  and 
was  silent. 

"I  suppose  you'd  like  me  and  Mrs.  Gainsborough  to 
clear  out  of  this?"  Sylvia  suggested. 

No,  he  would  like  nothing  of  the  kind;  he  greatly  pre- 
ferred that  they  should  all  stay  where  they  were  as  they 
were,  save  only  that  of  course  they  must  pay  no  rent  in 
future  and  that  he  must  be  allowed  to  maintain  entirely 
the  upkeep  of  the  apartment.  He  wished  it  to  be  essen- 
tially their  own  and  he  had  no  intention  of  intruding  there 
except  as  a  guest.  From  time  to  time  no  doubt  Lily  would 
like  to  see  something  of  the  French  countryside  and  of  the 
plages,  and  no  doubt  equally  Sylvia  would  not  be  lonely  in 
Paris  with  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  He  believed  that  Lily 
loved  him.  She  was,  of  course,  like  all  English  girls,  cold, 
but  for  his  part  he  admired  such  coldness,  in  fact  he 


Sylvia    Scarlett  265 

admired  everything  English.  He  knew  that  his  happiness 
depended  upon  Sylvia,  and  he  begged  her  to  be  kind. 

Hector  Ozanne  was  the  only  son  of  a  rich  manufacturer 
who  had  died  about  five  years  ago.  The  business  had  for 
some  time  been  a  limited  company  of  which  Madame 
Ozanne  held  the  greater  number  of  shares.  Hector  himself 
was  now  twenty-five  and  would  within  a  year  be  found  a 
wife  by  his  mother;  until  then  he  would  be  allowed  to 
choose  a  mistress  by  himself.  He  was  kind-hearted,  simple, 
and  immensely  devoted  to  Lily.  She  liked  lunching  and 
dining  with  him,  and  would  like  still  better  dressing  herself 
at  his  expense;  she  certainly  cared  for  him  as  much  now  as 
his  future  wife  would  care  for  him  on  the  wedding-day. 
There  seemed  no  reason  to  oppose  the  intimacy.  If  it 
should  happen  that  Hector  should  fail  to  treat  Lily  prop- 
erly, Sylvia  would  know  how  to  deal  with  him,  or  rather 
with  his  mother.  Amen. 

July  was  burning  fiercely  and  Hector  was  unwilling  to 
lose  delightful  days  with  Lily;  they  drove  away  together 
one  morning  in  a  big  motor-car,  which  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
blessed  with  as  much  fervor  as  she  would  have  blessed  a 
hired  brougham  at  a  suburban  wedding.  She  and  Sylvia 
were  left  together  either  to  visit  some  plage  or  amuse  them- 
selves in  Paris. 

"Paris  I  think,  you  uncommendable  mammoth,  you 
phosphor-eyed  hippopotamus,  Paris  I  think" 

"Well,  I  should  like  to  see  a  bit  of  life,  I  must  say. 
We've  led  a  very  quiet  existence  so  far.  I  don't  want  to  go 
back  to  England  and  tell  my  friend  Mrs.  Marsham  that 
I've  seen  nothing.  She's  a  most  enterprising  woman  her- 
self. I  don't  think  you  ever  saw  her,  did  you?  Before  she 
was  going  to  have  her  youngest  she  had  a  regular  passion 
to  ride  on  a  camel.  She  used  to  dream  of  camels  all  night 
long,  and  at  last,  being  as  I  said  a  very  enterprising  woman 
and  being  afraid  when  her  youngest  was  born  he  might  be 
a  humpback  through  her  dreaming  of  camels  all  the  time, 
she  couldn't  stand  it  no  longer  and  one  Monday  morning, 
which  is  a  sixpenny  day,  she  went  off  to  the  Zoo  by  herself, 
being  seven  months  gone  at  the  time,  and  took  six  rides  on 
the  camel  right  off"  the  reel,  as  they  say." 

"That  must  have  been  the  last  straw,"  Sylvia  said. 


266  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Have  I  told  you  this  story  before,  then?" 

Sylvia  shook  her  head. 

"Well,  that's  a  queer  thing.  I  was  just  about  to  say 
that  when  she'd  finished  her  rides  she  went  to  look  at  the 
giraffes,  and  one  of  them  got  hold  of  her  straw  hat  in  his 
mouth  and  nearly  tore  it  off  her  head.  She  hollered  out, 
and  the  keeper  asked  her  if  she  couldn't  read  the  notice 
that  visitors  was  requested  not  to  feed  these  animals. 
This  annoyed  Mrs.  Marsham  very  much,  and  she  told  the 
keeper  he  wasn't  fit  to  manage  performing  fleas,  let  alone 
giraffes,  which  annoyed  him  very  much.  It's  a  pity  you 
never  met  her.  I  sent  her  a  post-card  the  other  day,  as 
vulgar  a  one  as  I  could  find,  but  you  can  buy  them  just  as 
vulgar  in  London." 

Sylvia  did  so  far  gratify  Mrs.  Gainsborough's  desire  to 
impress  Mrs.  Marsham  as  to  take  her  to  one  or  two  Mont- 
martre  ballrooms;  but  she  declared  they  did  not  come  up 
to  her  expectations,  and  decided  that  she  should  have  to 
fall  back  on  her  own  imagination  to  thrill  Mrs.  Marsham. 

"As  most  travelers  do,"  Sylvia  added. 

They  also  went  together  to  several  plays,  at  which  Sylvia 
laughed  very  heartily,  much  to  Mrs.  Gainsborough's 
chagrin. 

"Pm  bothered  if  I  know  what  you're  laughing  at,"  she 
said,  finally.  "I  can't  understand  a  word  of  what  they're 
saying." 

"Just  as  well  you  can't,"  Sylvia  told  her. 

"Now  there's  a  tantalizing  hussy  for  you.  But  I  can 
guess,  you  great  tomboy." 

Whereupon  Mrs.  Gainsborough  laughed  as  heartily  as 
anybody  in  the  audience  at  her  own  particular  thoughts. 
She  attracted  a  good  deal  of  attention  by  this,  because  she 
often  laughed  at  them  without  reference  to  what  was 
happening  on  the  stage.  When  Sylvia  dug  her  in  the  ribs 
to  make  her  keep  quiet,  she  protested  that,  if  she  could 
only  tell  the  audience  what  she  was  thinking,  they  would 
not  bother  any  more  about  the  stage. 

"A  penny  for  your  thoughts,  they  say.  I  reckon  mine 
are  worth  the  price  of  a  seat  in  the  circle,  anyway." 

It  was  after  this  performance  that  Sylvia  and  Mrs. 
Gainsborough  went  to  the  Cafe  de  la  Chouette,  which  was 


Sylvia    Scarlett  267 

frequented  mostly  by  the  performers,  poets,  and  composers 
of  the  music-hall  world.  The  place  was  crowded,  and  they 
were  forced  to  sit  at  a  table  already  occupied  by  one  of 
those  figures  that  only  in  Paris  seem  to  have  the  right  to 
live  on  an  equality  with  the  rest  of  mankind,  merely  on 
account  of  their  eccentric  appearance.  He  was  probably 
not  more  than  forty  years  old,  but  his  gauntness  made  him 
look  older.  He  wore  blue-and-white  checked  trousers,  a 
tail  coat  from  which  he  or  somebody  else  had  clipped  off 
the  tails,  a  red  velvet  waistcoat,  and  a  yachting-cap.  His 
eyes  were  cavernous,  his  cheeks  were  rouged  rather  than 
flushed  with  fever.  He  carried  a  leather  bag  slung  round 
his  middle  filled  with  waste  paper,  from  which  he  occasion- 
ally took  out  a  piece  and  wrote  upon  it  a  few  words.  He 
was  drinking  an  unrecognizable  liqueur. 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  rather  nervous  of  sitting  down 
beside  so  strange  a  creature,  but  Sylvia  insisted.  The  man 
made  no  gesture  at  their  approach,  but  turned  his  eyes 
upon  them  with  the  impassivity  of  a  cat. 

"Look  here,  Sylvia,  in  two  twos  he's  going  to  give  me  an 
attack  of  the  horrors,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  whispered. 
"He's  staring  at  me  and  twitching  his  nose  like  a  hungry 
child  at  a  jam  roll.  It's  no  good  you  telling  me  to  give 
over.  I  can't  help  it.  Look  at  his  eyes.  More  like  coal- 
cellars  than  eyes.  I've  never  been  able  to  abide  being 
stared  at  since  I  sat  down  beside  a  wax-work  at  Louis 
Tussaud's  and  asked  it  where  the  ladies'  cloak-room  was." 

"He  amuses  me,"  Sylvia  said.  "What  are  you  going  to 
have?" 

"Well,  I  was  going  to  have  a  grenadier,  but  really  if 
that  skelington  opposite  is  going  to  look  at  me  all  night,  I 
think  I'll  take  something  stronger." 

"Try  a  cuirassier,"  Sylvia  suggested. 

"Whatever's  that?'\ 

"It's  the  same  relation  to  a  Curasao  that  a  grenadier  is 
to  a  grenadine." 

"What  I  should  really  like  is  a  nice  little  drop  of  whisky 
with  a  little  tiddley  bit  of  lemon;  but  there,  I've  noticed 
if  you  ask  for  whisky  in  Paris  it  causes  a  regular  commo- 
tion. The  waiter  holds  the  bottle  as  if  it  was  going  to  bite 
him,  and  the  proprietor  winks  at  him  he's  pouring  out  too 


268  Sylvia    Scarlett 

much,  and  I  can't  abide  those  blue  siphons.  Sells  they 
call  them,  and  sells  they  are." 

"I  shall  order  you  a  bock  in  a  moment,"  Sylvia  threat- 
ened. 

"Now  don't  be  unkind  just  because  I  made  a  slight 
complaint  about  being  stared  at.  Perhaps  they  won't 
make  such  a  bother  if  I  do  have  a  little  whisky.  But  there, 
I  can't  resist  it.  It's  got  a  regular  taste  of  London,  whisky 
has." 

The  man  at  the  table  leaned  over  suddenly  and  asked, 
in  a  tense  voice: 

"Scotch  or  Irish?" 

"Oh,  good  land!  what  a  turn  you  gave  me!  I  couldn't 
have  jumped  more,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  exclaimed,  "not 
if  one  of  the  lions  in  Trafalgar  Square  had  said  pip-ip  as  I 
passed!" 

"You  didn't  think  I  was  English,  did  you?"  said  the 
stranger.  "  I  forget  it  myself  sometimes.  I'm  a  terrible 
warning  to  the  world.  I'm  a  pose  that's  become  a 
reality." 

"Pose?"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  echoed.  "Oh,  I  didn't 
understand  you  for  the  moment.  You  mean  you're  an 
artist's  model?" 

The  stranger  turned  his  eyes  upon  Sylvia,  and,  whether 
from  sympathy  or  curiosity,  she  made  friends  with  him,  so 
that  when  they  were  ready  to  go  home  the  eccentric 
Englishman,  whom  every  one  called  Milord  and  who  did 
not  offer  any  alternative  name  to  his  new  friends,  said  he 
would  walk  with  them  a  bit  of  the  way,  much  to  Mrs. 
Gainsborough's  embarrassment. 

"I'm  the  first  of  the  English  decadents,"  he  proclaimed 
to  Sylvia.  "Twenty  years  ago  I  came  to  Paris  to  study 
art.  I  hadn't  a  penny  to  spend  on  drugs.  I  hadn't  enough 
money  to  lead  a  life  of  sin.  There's  a  tragedy!  For  five 
years  I  starved  myself  instead.  I  thought  I  should  make 
myself  interesting.  I  did.  I  became  a  figure.  I  learned 
the  raptures  of  hunger.  Nothing  surpasses  them — opium, 
morphine,  ether,  cocaine,  hemp.  What  are  they  beside 
hunger?  Have  you  got  any  coco  with  you?  Just  a  little 
pinch?  No?  Never  mind.  I  don't  really  like  it.  Not 
really.  Some  people  like  it,  though.  Who's  the  old  woman 


Sylvia    Scarlett  269 

with  you?  A  procuress?  Last  night  I  had  a  dream  in 
which  I  proved  the  non-existence  of  God  by  the  least 
common  multiple.  I  can't  exactly  remember  how  I  did 
it  now.  That's  why  I  was  so  worried  this  evening;  I  can't 
remember  if  the  figures  were  two,  four,  sixteen,  and  thirty- 
eight.  I  worked  it  out  last  night  in  my  dream.  I  obtained 
a  view  of  the  universe  as  a  geometrical  abstraction.  It's 
perfectly  simple,  but  I  cannot  get  it  right  now.  There's  a 
crack  in  my  ceiling  which  indicates  the  way.  Unless  I  can 
walk  along  that  crack  I  can't  reach  the  center  of  the 
universe,  and  of  course  it's  hopeless  to  try  to  obtain  a  view 
of  the  universe  as  a  geometrical  abstraction  if  one  can't 
reach  the  center.  I  take  it  you  agree  with  me  on  that 
point.  That  point!  Wait  a  minute.  I'm  almost  there. 
That  point.  Don't  let  me  forget.  That  point.  That  is 
the  point.  Ah!" 

The  abstraction  eluded  him  and  he  groaned  aloud. 

"The  more  I  listen  to  him,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough, 
"the  more  certain  sure  I  am  he  ought  to  see  a  doctor." 

"I  must  say  good  night,"  the  stranger  murmured,  sadly. 
"I  see  that  I  must  start  again  at  the  beginning  of  that 
crack  in  my  ceiling.  I  was  lucky  to  find  the  room  that  had 
such  a  crack,  though  in  a  way  it's  rather  a  nuisance.  It 
branches  off  so,  and  I  very  often  lose  the  direction.  There's 
one  particular  branch  that  always  leads  away  from  the 
point.  I'm  afraid  to  do  anything  about  it  in  the  morning. 
Of  course,  I  might  put  up  a  notice  to  say,  this  is  the  wrong 
way;  but  supposing  it  were  really  the  right  way?  It's  a 
great  responsibility  to  own  such  a  crack.  Sometimes  I 
almost  go  mad  with  the  burden  of  responsibility.  Why,  by 
playing  about  with  that  ceiling  when  my  brain  isn't  per- 
fectly clear  I  might  upset  the  whole  universe!  We'll  meet 
again  one  night  at  the  Chouette.  I  think  I'll  cross  the 
boulevard  now.  There's  no  traffic,  and  I  have  to  take  a 
certain  course  not  to  confuse  my  line  of  thought." 

The  eccentric  stranger  left  them  and,  crossing  the  road 
in  a  series  of  diagonal  tacks,  disappeared. 

"Coco,"  said  Sylvia. 

"Cocoa?"  echoed  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "Brandy,  more 
like." 

"Or  hashish." 


270  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Ashes?  Well,  I  had  a  fox-terrier  once  that  died  in 
convulsions  from  eating  coke,  so  perhaps  it  is  ashes." 

"We  must  meet  him  again, "  said  Sylvia.  "These  queer 
people  outside  ordinary  life  interest  me/* 

"Well,  it's  interesting  to  visit  a  hospital,"  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough agreed.  "But  that  doesn't  say  you  want  to 
go  twice.  Once  is  enough  for  that  fellow,  to  my  think- 
ing. He's  interesting,  but  uncomfortable,  like  the  top 
of  a  'bus." 

Sylvia,  however,  was  determined  to  pursue  her  acquaint- 
ance with  the  outcast  Englishman.  She  soon  discovered 
that  for  years  he  had  been  taking  drugs  and  that  nothing 
but  drugs  had  brought  him  to  his  present  state  of  abject 
buffoonery.  Shortly  before  he  became  friends  with  Sylvia 
he  had  been  taken  up  as  a  week's  amusement  by  some 
young  men  who  were  under  the  impression  that  they  were 
seeing  Parisian  life  in  his  company.  They  had  been  gener- 
ous to  him,  and  latterly  he  had  been  able  to  drug  himself 
as  much  as  he  wanted.  The  result  had  been  to  hasten  his 
supreme  collapse.  Even  in  his  last  illness  he  would  not 
talk  to  Sylvia  about  his  youth  before  he  came  to  Paris,  and 
in  the  end  she  was  ^inclined  to  accept  him  at  his  own  esti- 
mate, a  pose  that  was  become  a  reality. 

One  evening  he  seemed  more  haggard  than  usual  and 
talked  much  less;  by  the  twitching  of  his  nostrils,  he  had 
been  dosing  himself  hard  with  cocaine.  Suddenly,  he 
stretched  his  thin  hand  across  the  marble  table  and  seized 
hers  feverishly: 

"Tell  me,"  he  asked.    "Are  you  sorry  for  me?" 

"I  think  it's  an  impertinence  to  be  sorry  for  anybody," 
she  answered.  "But  if  you  mean  do  I  wish  you  well, 
why,  yes,  old  son,  I  wish  you  very  well." 

"What  I  told  you  once  about  my  coming  to  Paris  to 
work  at  art  was  all  lies.  I  came  here  because  I  had  to  leave 
nothing  else  behind,  not  even  a  name.  You  said,  one 
evening  when  we  were  arguing  about  ambition,  that  if  you 
could  only  find  your  line  you  might  do  something  on  the 
stage.  Why  don't  you  recite  my  poems?  Read  them 
through.  One  or  two  are  in  English,  but  most  of  them  are 
in  French.  They  are  really  more  sighs  than  poems.  They 
require  no  acting.  They  want  just  a  voice." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  271 

He  undid  the  leather  strap  that  supported  his  satchel 
and  handed  it  to  Sylvia. 

"To-morrow,"  he  said,  "if  I'm  still  alive,  I'll  come  here 
and  find  out  what  you  think  of  them.  But  you've  no  idea 
how  threatening  that  'if  is.  It  gets  longer  and  longer. 
I  can't  see  the  end  if  it  anywhere.  It  was  very  long  last 
night.  The  dot  of  the  'i*  was  already  out  of  sight.  It's 
the  longest  'if  that  was  ever  imagined." 

He  rose  hurriedly  and  left  the  cafe;  Sylvia  never  saw 
him  again. 

The  poems  of  this  strange  and  unhappy  creature  formed 
a  record  of  many  years'  slow  debasement.  Many  of  them 
seemed  to  her  too  personal  and  too  poignant  to  be  repeated 
aloud,  almost  even  to  be  read  to  oneself.  There  was 
nothing,  indeed,  to  do  but  burn  them,  that  no  one  else 
might  comprehend  a  man's  degradation.  Some  of  the 
poems,  however,  were  objective,  and  in  their  complete 
absence  of  any  effort  to  impress  or  rend  or  horrify  they 
seemed  not  so  much  poems  as  actual  glimpses  into  human 
hearts.  Nor  was  that  a  satisfactory  definition,  for  there 
was  no  attempt  to  explain  any  of  the  people  described  in 
these  poems;  they  were  ordinary  people  of  the  streets  that 
lived  in  a  few  lines.  This  could  only  be  said  of  the  poems 
written  in  French;  those  in  English  seemed  to  her  not 
very  remarkable.  She  wondered  if  perhaps  the  less 
familiar  tongue  had  exacted  from  him  an  achievement 
that  was  largely  fortuitous. 

"I've  got  an  idea  for  a  show,"  Sylvia  said  to  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough. "One  or  two  old  folk-songs,  and  then  one  of 
these  poems  half  sung,  half  recited  to  an  improvised 
accompaniment.  Not  more  than  one  each  evening." 

Sylvia  was  convinced  of  her  ability  to  make  a  success, 
and  spent  a  couple  of  weeks  in  searching  for  the  folk-songs 
she  required. 

Lily  and  Hector  came  back  in  the  middle  of  this  new 
idea,  and  Hector  was  sure  that  Sylvia  would  be  successful. 
She  felt  that  he  was  too  well  pleased  with  himself  at  the 
moment  not  to  be  uncritically  content  with  the  rest  of  the 
world,  but  he  was  useful  to  Sylvia  in  securing  an  audition 
for  her.  The  agent  was  convinced  of  the  inevitable  failure 
of  Sylvia's  performance  with  the  public,  and  said  he 
18 


272  Sylvia    Scarlett 

thought  it  was  a  pity  to  waste  such  real  talent  on  antique 
rubbish  like  the  songs  she  had  chosen.  As  for  the  poems, 
they  were  no  doubt  all  very  well  in  their  way;  he  was  not 
going  to  say  he  had  not  been  able  to  listen  to  them,  but 
the  public  did  not  expect  that  kind  of  thing.  He  did  not 
wish  to  discourage  a  friend  of  M.  Ozanne;  he  had  by  him 
the  rights  for  what  would  be  three  of  the  most  popular 
songs  in  Europe,  if  they  were  well  sung.  Sylvia  read  them 
through  and  then  sang  them.  The  agent  was  delighted. 
She  knew  he  was  really  pleased  because  he  gave  up  refer- 
ring to  her  as  a  friend  of  M.  Ozanne  and  addressed  her 
directly.  Hector  advised  her  to  begin  with  the  ordinary 
stuff,  and  when  she  was  well  known  enough  to  experiment 
upon  the  public  with  her  own  ideas.  Sylvia,  who  was 
feeling  the  need  to  do  something  at  once,  decided  to  risk 
an  audition  at  one  of  the  outlying  music-halls.  She  herself 
declared  that  the  songs  were  so  good  in  their  own  way  that 
she  could  not  help  making  a  hit,  but  the  others  insisted 
that  the  triumph  belonged  to  her. 

"  Vous  avez  vraiment  de  I'espieglerie,"  said  Hector. 

"You  really  were  awfully  jolly,"  said  Lily. 

"I  didn't  understand  a  word,  of  course,"  said  Mrs. 
Gainsborough.  "But  you  looked  that  wicked — well, 
really — I  thoroughly  enjoyed  myself." 

During  the  autumn  Sylvia  had  secured  engagements  in 
music-halls  of  the  quartier,  but  the  agent  advised  her  to 
take  a  tour  before  she  ventured  to  attack  the  real  Paris. 
It  seemed  to  her  a  good  way  of  passing  the  winter.  Lily 
and  Hector  were  very  much  together,  and  though  Hector 
was  always  anxious  for  Sylvia  to  make  a  third,  she  found 
that  the  kind  of  amusement  that  appealed  to  him  was 
much  the  same  as  that  which  had  appealed  to  the  young 
men  who  frequented  Half  Moon  Street.  It  was  a  life  of 
going  to  races,  at  which  Hector  would  pass  ladies  with- 
out saluting  or  being  saluted,  who,  he  informed  Sylvia 
and  Lily  afterward,  were  his  aunts  or  his  cousins,  and 
actually  on  one  occasion  his  mother.  Sylvia  began  to 
feel  the  strain  of  being  in  the  demi-monde  but  not  of  it; 
it  was  an  existence  that  suited  Lily  perfectly,  who  could 
not  understand  why  Sylvia  should  rail  at  their  seclusion 
from  the  world.  Mrs.  Gainsborough  began  to  grow  rest- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  273 

less  for  the  peace  of  Mulberry  Cottage  and  the  safety  of 
her  furniture. 

"You  never  know  what  will  happen.  I  had  a  friend 
once — a  Mrs.  Beardmore.  She  was  housekeeper  to  two 
maiden  ladies  in  Portman  Square — well,  housekeeper,  she 
was  more  of  a  companion  because  one  of  them  was  stone 
deaf.  One  summer  they  went  away  to  Scarborough,  and 
when  they  came  back  some  burglars  had  brought  a 
furniture-van  three  days  running  and  emptied  the  whole 
house,  all  but  the  bell-pulls.  Drove  back,  they  did,  from 
King's  Cross  in  a  four-wheeler,  and  the  first  thing  they 
saw  was  a  large  board  up — TO  BE  LET  OR  SOLD.  A  fine 
how-de-do  there  was  in  Portman  Square,  I  can  tell  you; 
and  the  sister  that  was  deaf  had  left  her  ear-trumpet 
in  the  train  and  nobody  couldn't  explain  to  her  what 
had  happened." 

So  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  whose  fears  had  been  heightened 
by  the  repetition  of  this  tale,  went  back  to  London  with 
what  she  described  as  a  collection  of  vulgarities  for  Mrs. 
Marsham.  Sylvia  went  away  on  tour. 

Sylvia  found  the  life  of  a  music-hall  singer  on  tour  very 
solitary.  Her  fellow-vagabonds  were  so  much  more  essen- 
tially mountebanks  than  in  England,  and  so  far  away  from 
normal  existence,  that  even  when  she  traveled  in  company 
because  her  next  town  coincided  with  the  next  town  of 
other  players,  she  was  never  able  to  identify  herself  with 
them,  as  in  England  she  had  managed  to  identify  herself 
with  the  other  members  of  the  chorus.  She  found  that  it 
paid  her  best  to  be  English,  and  to  affect  in  her  songs  an 
almost  excessive  English  accent.  She  rather  resented  the 
exploitation  of  her  nationality,  because  it  seemed  to  her 
the  same  kind  of  appeal  that  would  have  been  made  by  a 
double-headed  woman  or  a  performing  seal.  Nobody 
wanted  her  songs  to  be  well  rendered  so  much  as  un- 
usually rendered;  everybody  wanted  to  be  surprised  by 
her  ability  to  sing  at  all  in  French.  But  if  the  audiences 
wished  her  to  be  English,  she  found  that  being  English  off 
the  stage  was  a  disadvantage  among  these  continental 
mountebanks.  Sylvia  discovered  the  existence  of  a  uni- 
versal prejudice  against  English  actresses,  partly  on 
account  of  their  alleged  personal  uncleanliness,  partly  on 


274  Sylvia    Scarlett 

account  of  their  alleged  insincerity.  On  several  occasions 
astonishment  was  expressed  at  the  trouble  she  took  with 
her  hair  and  at  her  capacity  for  being  a  good  copaine; 
when,  later  on,  it  would  transpire  that  she  was  half  French, 
everybody  would  find  almost  with  relief  an  explanation  of 
her  apparent  unconformity  to  rule. 

Sylvia  grew  very  weary  of  the  monotonous  life  in  which 
everybody's  interest  was  bounded  by  the  psychology  of  an 
audience.  Interest  in  the  individual  never  extended 
beyond  the  question  of  whether  she  would  or  would  not, 
if  she  were  a  woman;  of  whether  he  desired  or  did  not 
desire,  if  he  were  a  man.  When  either  of  these  questions 
was  answered  the  interest  reverted  to  the  audience.  It 
seemed  maddeningly  unimportant  to  Sylvia  that  the 
audience  on  Monday  night  should  have  failed  to  appreci- 
ate a  point  which  the  audience  of  Tuesday  night  would 
probably  hail  with  enthusiasm;  yet  often  she  had  to 
admit  to  herself  that  it  was  just  her  own  inability  or  un- 
willingness to  treat  an  audience  as  an  individual  that  pre- 
vented her  from  gaining  real  success.  She  decided  that 
every  interpretative  artist  must  pander  his  emotion,  his 
humor,  his  wit,  his  movements  nightly,  and  that  somehow 
he  must  charm  each  audience  into  the  complacency  with 
which  a  sophisticated  libertine  seeks  an  admission  of  en- 
during love  from  the  woman  he  has  paid  to  satisfy  a 
momentary  desire.  Assuredly  the  most  successful  per- 
formers in  the  grand  style  were  those  who  could  conceal 
even  from  the  most  intelligent  audiences  their  professional 
relation  to  them.  A  performer  of  acknowledged  reputa- 
tion would  not  play  to  the  gallery  with  battered  wiles  and 
manifest  allurements,  but  it  was  unquestionable  that  the 
foundation  of  success  was  playing  to  the  gallery,  and  that 
the  third-rate  performer  who  flattered  these  provincial 
audiences  with  the  personal  relation  could  gain  louder 
applause  than  Sylvia,  who  wanted  no  audience  but  herself. 
It  was  significant  how  a  word  of  argot  that  meant  a  fraud 
of  apparent  brilliancy  executed  by  an  artist  upon  the 
public  had  extended  itself  into  daily  use.  Everything  was 
chic.  It  was  chic  to  wear  a  hat  of  the  latest  fashion;  it 
was  chic  to  impress  one's  lover  by  a  jealous  outburst; 
it  was  chic  to  refuse  a  man  one's  favors.  Everything  was 


Sylvia    Scarlett  275 

chic:  it  was  impossible  to  think  or  act  or  speak  in  this 
world  of  vagabonds  without  chic. 

The  individualistic  life  that  Sylvia  had  always  led  both 
in  private  and  in  public  seemed  to  her,  notwithstanding 
the  various  disasters  of  her  career,  infinitely  worthier  than 
this  dependency  upon  the  herd  that  found  its  most  obvious 
expression  in  the  theater.  It  was  revolting  to  witness 
human  nature's  lust  for  the  unexceptionable  or  its  cruel 
pleasure  in  the  exception.  Yet  now,  looking  back  at  her 
past,  she  could  see  that  it  had  always  been  her  unwilling- 
ness to  conform  that  had  kept  her  apart  from  so  much 
human  enjoyment  and  human  gain,  though  equally  she 
might  claim  apart  from  human  sorrow  and  human  loss. 

"The  struggle,  of  course,  would  be  terrible  for  a  long 
while,"  Sylvia  said  to  herself,  "if  everybody  renounced 
entirely  any  kind  of  co-operation  or  interference  with  or 
imitation  of  or  help  from  anybody  else,  but  out  of  that 
struggle  might  arise  the  true  immortals.  A  cat  with  a 
complete  personality  is  surely  higher  than  a  man  with  an 
incomplete  personality.  Anyway,  it's  quite  certain  that 
this  cabotinage  is  for  me  impossible.  I  believe  that  if  I 
pricked  a  vein  sawdust  would  trickle  out  of  me  now." 

In  such  a  mood  of  cheated  hope  did  Sylvia  return  to 
Paris  in  the  early  spring;  she  was  about  to  comment  on 
Lily's  usual  state  of  molluscry,  by  yielding  to  which  in 
abandoning  the  will. she  had  lost  the  power  to  develop, 
when  Lily  herself  proceeded  to  surprise  her. 

The  affection  between  Hector  and  Lily  had  apparently 
made  a  steady  growth  and  had  floated  in  an  undisturbed 
and  equable  depth  of  water  for  so  long  that  Lily,  like  an 
ambitious  water-lily,  began  to  be  ambitious  of  becoming  a 
terrestial  plant.  While  for  nearly  a  year  she  had  been 
blossoming  apparently  without  regard  for  anything  but  the 
beauty  of  the  moment,  she  had  all  the  time  been  sending 
out  long  roots  beneath  the  water,  long  roots  that  were 
growing  more  and  more  deeply  into  the  warm  and  respect- 
able mud. 

"You  mean  you'd  like  to  marry  Hector?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Why,  yes,  I  think  I  should,  rather.  I'm  getting  tired 
of  never  being  settled." 

"  But  does  he  want  to  marry  you  ?" 


276  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"We've  talked  about  it  often.  He  hates  the  idea  of  not 
marrying  me." 

"He'd  like  to  go  away  with  you  and  live  on  the  top  of  a 
mountain  remote  from  mankind,  or  upon  a  coral  island  in 
the  Pacific  with  nothing  but  the  sound  of  the  surf  and  the 
cocoanuts  dropping  idly  one  by  one,  wouldn't  he?" 

"Well,  he  did  say  he  wished  we  could  go  away  some- 
where all  alone.  How  did  you  guess  ?  How  clever  you  are, 
Sylvia!"  Lily  exclaimed,  opening  wide  her  deep-blue  eyes. 

"My  dear  girl,  when  a  man  knows  that  it's  impossible  to 
be  married  either  because  he's  married  already  or  for  any 
other  reason,  he  always  hymns  a  solitude  for  two.  You 
never  heard  any  man  with  serious  intentions  propose  to 
live  with  his  bride-elect  in  an  Alpine  hut  or  under  a  lonely 
palm.  The  man  with  serious  intentions  tries  to  reconcile 
his  purse,  not  his  person,  with  poetic  aspirations.  He's 
in  a  quandary  between  Hampstead  and  Kensington,  not 
between  mountain-tops  and  lagoons.  I  suppose  he  has 
also  talked  of  a  dream-child — a  fairy  miniature  of  his 
Lily?"  Sylvia  went  on. 

"We  have  talked  about  a  baby,"  Lily  admitted. 

"The  man  with  serious  intentions  talks  about  the  aspect 
of  the  nursery  and  makes  reluctant  plans  to  yield,  if  com- 
pelled to,  the  room  he  had  chosen  for  his  study." 

"You  make  fun  of  everything,"  Lily  murmured,  rather 
sulkily. 

"But,  my  dear,"  Sylvia  argued,  "for  me  to  be  able  to 
reproduce  Hector's  dream  so  accurately  proves  that  I'm 
building  to  the  type.  I'll  speculate  further.  I'm  sure  he 
has  regretted  the  irregular  union  and  vowed  that,  had 
he  but  known  at  first  what  an  angel  of  purity  you  were, 
he  would  have  died  rather  than  propose  it." 

Lily  sat  silent,  frowning.  Presently  she  jumped  up,  and 
the  sudden  activity  of  movement  brought  home  to  Sylvia 
more  than  anything  else  the  change  in  her. 

"If  you  promise  not  to  laugh,  here  are  his  letters," 
Lily  said,  flinging  into  Sylvia's  lap  a  bundle  tied  up  with 
ribbon. 

"Letters!"  Sylvia  snapped.  "Who  cares  about  letters? 
The  love-letters  of  a  successful  lover  have  no  value.  When 
he  has  something  to  write  that  he  cannot  say  to  your  face, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  277 

then  Pll  read  his  letter.  All  public  blandishments  shock 
me." 

Hector  was  called  away  from  Paris  to  go  and  stay  with 
his  mother  at  Aix-les-Bains;  for  a  fortnight  two  letters 
arrived  every  day. 

"The  snow  in  Savoy  will  melt  early  this  year,"  Sylvia 
mocked.  "It's  lucky  he's  not  staying  at  St.-Moritz. 
Winter  sports  could  never  survive  such  a  furnace." 

Then  followed  a  week's  silence. 

"The  Alpine  Club  must  have  protested,"  Sylvia 
mocked.  "Avalanches  are  not  expected  in  March." 

"He's  probably  motoring  with  his  mother,"  Lily  ex- 
plained. 

The  next  day  a  letter  arrived  from  Hector. 

HOTEL  SUPERBE, 

AIX-LES-BAINS. 

My  DEAR  LILY, — I  do  not  know  how  to  express  myself.  You  have 
known  always  the  great  difficulties  of  my  position  opposite  to  my  mother. 
She  has  found  that  I  owe  to  marry  myself,  and  I  have  demanded  the 
hand  of  Mademoiselle  Arpenteur-Legage.  I  dare  not  ask  your  pardon, 
but  I  have  written  to  make  an  arrangement  for  you,  and  from  now  please 
use  the  apartment  which  has  for  me  memories  the  most  sacred.  It  is 
useless  to  fight  against  circumstances. 

HECTOR. 

"I  think  he  might  have  used  mourning  paper,"  Sylvia 
said.  "They  always  have  plenty  at  health  resorts." 

"Don't  be  so  unkind,  Sylvia,"  Lily  cried.  "How  can 
you  be  so  unkind,  when  you  see  that  my  heart  is  broken  ?" 
She  burst  into  tears. 

In  a  moment  Sylvia  was  on  ner  knees  beside  her. 

"Lily,  my  dearest  Lily,  you  did  not  really  love  him? 
Oh  no,  my  dear,  not  really.  If  you  really  loved  him,  I'll 
go  now  to  Aix  myself  and  arrange  matters  over  the  head 
of  his  stuffy  old  mother.  But  you  didn't  really  love  him. 
You're  simply  upset  at  the  breaking  of  a  habit.  Oh,  my 
dear,  you  couldn't  really  have  loved  him!" 

"He  sha'n't  marry  this  girl,"  Lily  declared,  standing  up 
in  a  rage.  "I'll  go  to  Aix-les-Bains  myself  and  I'll  see  this 
Mademoiselle."  She  snatched  the  letter  from  the  floor  to 
read  the  odious  name  of  her  rival.  "I'll  send  her  all  his 
letters.  You  mightn't  want  to  read  them,  but  she'll  want 


278  Sylvia    Scarlett 

to  read  them.  She'll  read  every  word.  She'll  read  how, 
when  he  was  thinking  of  proposing  to  her,  he  was  calling 
me  his  angel,  his  life,  his  soul,  how  he  was —  Oh,  she'll  read 
every  word,  and  I'll  send  them  to  her  by  registered  post, 
and  then  I'll  know  she  gets  them.  How  dare  a  Frenchman 
treat  an  English  girl  like  that?  How  dare  he?  How  dare 
he?  French  people  think  English  girls  have  no  passion. 
They  think  we're  cold.  Are  we  cold?  We  may  not  like 
being  kissed  all  the  time  like  French  girls,  but  we're  not 
cold.  Oh,  I  feel  I  could  kill  him!" 

Sylvia  interrupted  her  rage. 

"My  dear,  if  all  this  fire  and  fury  is  because  you're  dis- 
appointed at  not  being  married,  twist  him  for  fifty  thou- 
sand francs,  buy  a  silver  casket,  put  his  letters  inside,  and 
send  them  to  him  for  a  wedding-present  with  your  good 
wishes.  But  if  you  love  him,  darling  Lily,  let  me  go  and 
tell  him  the  truth;  if  I  think  he's  not  worth  it,  then  come 
away  with  me  and  be  lonely  with  me  somewhere.  My 
beautiful  thing,  I  can't  promise  you  a  coral  island,  but 
you  shall  have  all  my  heart  if  you  will." 

"Love  him?"  echoed  Lily.  "I  hate  him.  I  despise  him 
after  this,  but  why  should  he  marry  her?" 

"If  you  feel  like  that  about  him,  I  should  have  thougnt 
the  best  way  to  punish  him  would  be  to  let  the  marriage 
proceed;  to  punish  him  further  you've  only  to  refuse 
yourself  to  him  when  he's  married,  for  I'm  quite  sure  that 
within  six  months  he'll  be  writing  to  say  what  a  mistake  he 
made,  how  cold  his  wife  is,  and  how  much  he  longs  to  come 
back  to  you,  la  jolie  maitresse  de  sa  jeunesse,  le  souvenir  du 
bon  temps  jadis,  and  so  on  with  the  sentimental  eternities 
of  reconstructed  passion." 

"Live  with  him  after  he's  married?"  Lily  exclaimed. 
"Why,  I've  never  even  kissed  a  married  man!  I  should 
never  forgive  myself." 

"You  don't  love  him  at  all,  do  you?"  Sylvia  asked, 
pressing  her  hands  down  on  Lily's  shoulders  and  forcing 
her  to  look  straight  at  her.  "Laugh,  my  dear,  laugh! 
Hurrah!  you  can't  pretend  you  care  a  bit  about  him. 
Fifty  thousand  francs  and  freedom!  And  just  when  I  was 
getting  bored  with  Paris." 

"It's  all  very  well  for  you,  Sylvia,"  Lily  said,  resentfully, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  279 

as  she  tried  to  shake  off  Sylvia's  exuberance.  "You  don't 
want  to  be  married.  I  do.  I  really  looked  forward  to 
marrying  Michael." 

Sylvia's  face  hardened. 

"Oh,  I  know  you  blame  me  entirely  for  that,"  she  con- 
tinued. "But  it  wasn't  my  fault,  really.  It  was  bad  luck. 
It's  no  good  pretending  I  wasn't  fond  of  Claude.  I  was, 
and  when  I  met  him — 

"Look  here,  don't  let's  live  that  episode  over  again  in 
discussion,"  Sylvia  said.  "It  belongs  to  the  past,  and  I've 
always  had  a  great  objection  to  body-snatching." 

"What  I  was  going  to  explain,"  Lily  went  on,  "was  that 
Michael  put  the  idea  of  marriage  into  my  head.  Then 
being  always  with  Hector,  I  got  used  to  being  with  some- 
body. I  was  always  treated  like  a  married  woman  when 
we  went  to  the  seaside  or  on  motoring  tours.  You  always 
think  that  because  I  sit  still  and  say  nothing  my  mind's 
an  absolute  blank,  but  it  isn't.  I've  been  thinking  for  a 
long  time  about  marriage.  After  all,  there  must  be  some- 
thing in  marriage,  or  so  many  people  wouldn't  get  married. 
You  married  the  wrong  man,  but  I  don't  believe  you'll 
ever  find  the  right  man.  You're  much,  much,  much  too 
critical.  I  will  get  married." 

"And  now,"  Sylvia  said,  with  a  laugh,  "to  all  the  other 
riddles  that  torment  my  poor  brain  I  must  add  you." 

Hector  Ozanne  tried  to  stanch  Lily's  wounded  ideals 
with  a  generous  compress  of  notes;  he  succeeded. 

"After  all,"  she  admitted,  twanging  the  elastic  round 
the  bundle.  "I'm  not  so  badly  off." 

"We  must  buy  that  silver  casket  for  the  letters,"  Sylvia 
said.  "His  wedding-day  draws  near.  I  think  I  shall  dress 
up  like  the  Ancient  Mariner  and  give  them  to  him  myself." 

"How  much  will  a  silver  casket  cost?"  Lily  asked. 

Sylvia  roughly  estimated. 

"It  seems  a  good  deal,"  said  Lily,  thoughtfully.  "I 
think  I  shall  just  send  them  to  him  in  a  cardboard  box.  I 
finished  those  chocolates  after  dinner.  Yes,  that  will  do 
quite  well.  After  all,  he  treated  me  very  badly  and  to  get 
his  letters  back  safely  will  be  quite  a  good-enough  present. 
What  could  he  do  with  a  silver  casket?  He'd  probably  use 
it  for  visiting-cards." 


280  Sylvia    Scarlett 

That  evening  Sylvia,  greatly  content  to  have  Lily  to  her- 
self, again  took  her  to  the  Cafe  de  la  Chouette. 

Her  agent,  who  was  drinking  in  a  corner,  came  across  to 
speak  to  her. 

"Brazil?"  she  repeated,  doubtfully. 

"Thirty  francs  for  three  songs  and  you  can  go  home  at 
twelve.  It  isn't  as  if  you  had  to  sit  drinking  champagne 
and  dancing  all  night." 

Sylvia  looked  at  Lily. 

"Would  you  like  a  voyage?" 

"We  might  as  well  go." 

The  contract  was  arranged. 


CHAPTER  XI 

ONE  of  the  habits  that  Sylvia  had  acquired  on  tour 
in  France  was  card-playing;  perhaps  she  inherited 
her  skill  from  Henry,  for  she  was  a  very  good  player. 
The  game  on  the  voyage  was  poker.  Before  they  were 
through  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  Sylvia  had  lost  five  hun- 
dred francs;  she  borrowed  five  hundred  francs  from  Lily 
and  set  herself  to  win  them  back.  The  sea  became  very 
rough  in  the  Atlantic;  all  the  passengers  were  seasick. 
The  other  four  poker-players,  who  were  theatrical  folk, 
wanted  to  stop,  but  Sylvia  would  not  hear  of  it;  she  was 
much  too  anxious  about  her  five  hundred  francs  to  feel 
seasick.  She  lost  Lily's  first  five  hundred  francs  and 
borrowed  five  hundred  more.  Lily  began  to  feel  less  sea- 
sick now,  and  she  watched  the  struggle  with  a  personal 
interest.  The  other  players,  with  the  hope  that  Sylvia's 
bad  luck  would  hold,  were  so  deeply  concentrated  upon 
maintaining  their  advantage  that  they  too  forgot  to  be 
seasick.  The  ship  rolled,  but  the  poker-players  only  left 
the  card-room  for  meals  in  the  deserted  saloon.  Sylvia 
began  to  win  again.  Blue  skies  and  calmer  weather  ap- 
peared; the  other  poker-players  had  no  excuse  for  not 
continuing,  especially  now  that  it  was  possible  to  play  on 
deck.  Sylvia  had  won  back  all  she  had  lost  and  two  hun- 
dred francs  besides  when  the  ship  entered  the  harbor  of 
Rio  de  Janeiro. 

"I  think  I  should  like  gambling,"  Lily  said,  "if  only  one 
didn't  have  to  shuffle  and  cut  all  the  time." 

The  place  where  Sylvia  was  engaged  to  sing  was  one  of 
those  centers  of  aggregated  amusement  that  exist  all  over 
the  world  without  any  particular  characteristic  to  dis- 
tinguish one  from  another,  like  the  dinners  in  what  are 
known  as  first-class  hotels  on  the  Continent.  Everything 


282  Sylvia    Scarlett 

here  was  more  expensive  than  in  Europe;  even  the 
roulette-boards  had  zero  and  double  zero  to  help  the  bank. 
The  tradition  of  Brazil  for  supplying  gold  and  diamonds 
to  the  world  had  bred  a  familiarity  with  the  external  signs 
of  wealth  that  expressed  itself  in  overjeweled  men  and 
women,  whose  display  one  forgave  more  easily  on  account 
of  the  natural  splendor  of  the  scene  with  which  they  had 
to  compete. 

Lily,  with  the  unerring  bad  taste  that  nearly  always  is 
to  be  found  in  sensuous  and  indolent  women,  to  whom  the 
obvious  makes  the  quickest  and  easiest  appeal,  admired 
the  flashing  stones  and  stars  and  fireflies  with  an  energy 
that  astonished  Sylvia,  notwithstanding  the  novel  glimpse 
she  had  been  given  of  Lily's  character  in  the  affair  with 
Hector  Ozanne.  The  climate  was  hot,  but  a  sea  breeze 
freshened  the  city  after  sunset;  the  enforced  day-long 
inactivity,  with  the  luxurious  cool  baths  and  competent 
negresses  who  attended  upon  her  lightest  movement, 
satisfied  Lily's  conception  of  existence,  and  when  they 
drove  along  the  margin  of  the  bay  before  dinner  her  only 
complaint  was  that  she  could  not  coruscate  like  other 
women  in  the  carriages  they  passed. 

With  the  money  they  had  in  hand  Sylvia  felt  justified  in 
avoiding  a  pension  d'artistes,  and  they  had  taken  a  flat 
together.  This  meant  that  when  Sylvia  went  to  work  at 
the  cabaret,  Lily,  unless  she  came  with  her,  was  left  alone, 
which  did  not  at  all  suit  her.  Sylvia  therefore  suggested 
that  she  should  accept  an  engagement  to  dance  at  mid- 
night, with  the  stipulation  that  she  should  not  be  com- 
pelled to  stay  until  3  A.M.  unless  she  wanted  to,  and 
that  by  foregoing  any  salary  she  should  not  be  expected  to 
drink  gooseberry  wine  at  8,000  reis  a  bottle,  on  which  she 
would  receive  a  commission  of  1,000  reis.  The  manage- 
ment knew  what  a  charm  the  tall,  fair  English  girl  would 
exercise  over  the  swart  Brazilians,  and  was  glad  enough  to 
engage  her  at  her  own  terms.  Sylvia  had  not  counted  upon 
Lily's  enjoying  the  cabaret  life  so  much.  The  heat  was 
affecting  her  much  more  than  Lily,  and  she  began  to  com- 
plain of  the  long  hours  of  what  for  her  was  a  so  false  gaiety. 
Nothing,  however,  would  persuade  Lily  to  go  home  before 
three  o'clock  at  the  earliest,  and  Sylvia,  on  whom  a  great 


Sylvia    Scarlett  283 

lassitude  and  indifference  had  settled,  used  to  wait  for  her, 
sitting  alone  while  Lily  danced  the  machiche. 

One  night,  when  Sylvia  had  sung  two  of  her  songs  with 
such  a  sense  of  hopeless  depression  weighing  her  down  that 
the  applause  which  followed  each  of  them  seemed  to  her  a 
mockery,  she  had  a  sudden  vertigo  from  which  she  pulled 
herself  together  with  a  conviction  that  nothing  would 
induce  her  to  sing  the  third  song.  She  went  on  the  scene, 
seated  herself  at  the  piano,  and  to  the  astonishment  and 
discomfort  of  the  audience  and  her  fellow-players,  half 
chanted,  half  recited  one  of  the  eccentric  Englishman's 
poems  about  a  body  in  the  morgue.  Such  a  performance 
in  such  a  place  created  consternation,  but  in  the  silence 
that  followed  Sylvia  fainted.  When  she  came  to  herself 
she  was  back  in  her  own  bedroom,  with  a  Brazilian  doctor 
jabbering  and  mouthing  over  her  symptoms.  Presently 
she  was  taken  to  a  clinic  and,  when  she  was  well  enough  to 
know  what  had  happened,  she  learned  that  she  had  yellow 
fever,  but  that  the  crisis  had  passed.  At  first  Lily  came  to 
see  her  every  day,  but  when  convalescence  was  further 
advanced  she  gave  up  coming,  which  worried  Sylvia 
intensely  and  hampered  her  progress.  She  insisted  that 
something  terrible  had  happened  to  Lily  and  worked 
herself  up  into  such  a  state  that  the  doctor  feared  a 
relapse.  She  was  too  weak  to  walk;  realizing  at  last 
that  the  only  way  of  escaping  from  the  clinic  would 
be  to  get  well,  she  fought  against  her  apprehensions  for 
Lily's  safety  and  after  a  fortnight  of  repressed  torments 
was  allowed  out.  When  Sylvia  reached  the  flat  she 
was  met  by  the  grinning  negresses,  who  told  her  that 
Lily  had  gone  to  live  elsewhere  and  let  her  understand 
that  it  was  with  a  man. 

Sylvia  was  not  nearly  well  enough  to  reappear  at  the 
cabaret,  but  she  went  down  that  evening  and  was  told  by 
the  other  girls  that  Lily  was  at  the  tables.  They  were  duly 
shocked  at  Sylvia's  altered  appearance,  congratulated  her 
upon  having  been  lucky  enough  to  escape  the  necessity  of 
shaving  her  head,  and  expressed  their  regrets  at  not  know- 
ing in  which  clinic  she  had  been  staying  so  that  they  might 
have  brought  her  the  news  of  their  world.  Sylvia  lacked 
the  energy  to  resent  their  hyprocrisy  and  went  to  look  for 


284  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Lily,  whom  she  found  blazing  with  jewels  at  one  of  the 
roulette-tables. 

There  was  something  so  fantastic  in  Lily's  appearance, 
thus  bedecked,  that  Sylvia  thought  for  a  moment  it  was  a 
feverish  vision  such  as  had  haunted  her  brain  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  illness.  Lily  wore  suspended  from  a  fine  chain 
round  her  neck  a  large  diamond,  one  of  those  so-called  blue 
diamonds  of  Brazil  that  in  the  moonlight  seem  like  sap- 
phires; her  fingers  flashed  fire;  a  large  brooch  of  rubies  in 
the  likeness  of  a  butterfly  winked  somberly  from  her  black 
corsage. 

Sylvia  made  her  way  through  the  press  of  gamblers  and 
touched  Lily's  arm.  So  intent  was  she  upon  the  tables  that 
she  brushed  away  the  hand  as  if  it  had  been  a  mosquito. 

"Lily!  Lily!"  Sylvia  called,  sharply.  "Where  have 
you  been?  Where  have  you  gone?" 

At  that  moment  the  wheel  stopped,  and  the  croupier 
cried  the  number  and  the  color  in  all  their  combinations. 
Sylvia  was  sure  that  he  exchanged  glances  with  Lily  and 
that  the  gold  piece  upon  the  33  on  which  he  was  paying 
had  not  been  there  before  the  wheel  had  stopped. 

"Lily!  Lily!  Where  have  you  been?"  Sylvia  called, 
again.  Lily  gathered  in  her  winnings  and  turned  round. 
It  was  curious  how  changed  her  eyes  were;  they  seemed 
now  merely  like  two  more  rich  jewels  that  she  was 
wearing. 

"I'm  sorry  I've  not  been  to  see  you,"  she  said.  "My 
dear,  I've  won  nearly  four  thousand  pounds." 

"You  have,  have  you?"  Sylvia  said.  "Then  the  sooner 
you  leave  Brazil  the  better. ' 

Lily  threw  a  swift  glance  of  alarm  toward  the  croupier, 
a  man  of  almost  unnatural  thinness,  who,  while  he  in- 
toned the  invitation  to  place  the  stakes,  fixed  his  eyes 
upon  her. 

"I  can't  leave  Brazil,"  she  said,  in  a  whisper.  "I'm 
living  with  him." 

"Living  with  a  croupier?"  Sylvia  gasped. 

"Hush!  He  belongs  to  quite  a  good  family.  He  ruined 
himself.  His  name  is  Manuel  Camacho.  Don't  talk  to  me 
any  more,  Sylvia.  Go  away.  He's  madly  jealous.  He 
wants  to  marry  me." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  285 

"Like  Hector,  I  suppose,"  Sylvia  scoffed. 

"Not  a  bit  like  Hector.  He  brings  a  priest  every  morn- 
ing and  says  he'll  kill  me  and  himself  and  the  priest,  too,  if 
I  don't  marry  him.  But  I  want  to  make  more  money,  and 
then  I  will  marry  him.  I  must.  I'm  afraid  of  what  he'll 
do  if  I  refuse.  Go  away  from  me,  Sylvia,  go  away.  There'll 
be  a  fearful  scene  to-night  if  you  will  go  on  talking  to  me. 
Last  night  a  man  threw  a  flower  into  our  carnage  when  we 
were  driving  home,  and  Manuel  jumped  out  and  beat  him 
insensible  with  his  cane.  Go  away." 

Sylvia  demanded  where  she  was  living,  but  Lily  would 
not  tell  her,  because  she  was  afraid  of  what  her  lover 
might  do. 

"He  doesn't  even  let  me  look  out  of  the  window.  If  I 
look  out  of  the  window  he  tears  his  clothes  with  rage  and 
digs  his  finger-nails  into  the  palms  of  his  hands.  He's  very 
violent.  Sometimes  he  shoots  at  the  chandelier." 

Sylvia  began  to  laugh.  There  was  something  ridiculous 
in  the  notion  of  Lily's  leading  this  kind  of  lion-tamer's 
existence.  Suddenly  the  croupier  with  an  angry  move- 
ment swept  a  pile  of  money  from  the  table. 

"Go  away,  Sylvia,  go  away.  I  know  he'll  break  out  in  a 
moment.  That  was  meant  for  a  warning." 

Sylvia  understood  that  it  was  hopeless  to  persist  for  the 
moment,  and  she  made  her  way  back  to  the  cabaret.  The 
girls  were  eager  to  know  what  she  thought  of  Lily's  pro- 
tector. 

"Elle  a  de  la  veine,  tu  sais,  la  petite  Lili.  Elle  I' a  pris 
comme  (a,  et  il  I'aime  d  la  folie.  Et  elle  gagne!  mon  Dieu, 
comme  elle  gagne!  Tout  va  pour  elle.  Tu  sais,  elle  a  des 
brillants  merveilleux.  Ca  fait  riche,  tu  sais.  Y'a  pas  de 
chic,  mais  il  est  jaloux!  II  se  porte  comme  un  fou.  Ca 
me  raseraity  tu  sais,  etre  collee  avec  un  homme  pareil.  Pour- 
tant,  elle  est  busineuse,  la  petite  Lili!  elle  ne  lui  donne  pas 
un  rond.  Y'a  pas  de  dos  vert.  Ah,  non,  elle  est  la  vraie 
anglais e  sans  blague.  Et  le  mec,  dis,  n'est-ce  pas  qu*il  est 
maigre  comme  tout?  On  dirait  un  squelette." 

With  all  their  depreciation  of  the  croupier,  it  seemed  to 
Sylvia  that  most  of  the  girls  would  have  been  well  pleased 
to  change  places  with  Lily.  But  how  was  she  herself  to 
regard  the  affair?  During  those  long  days  of  illness,  when 


286  Sylvia    Scarlett 

she  had  lain  hour  after  hour  with  her  thoughts,  to  what  a 
failure  her  life  had  seemed  to  be  turning,  and  what  a  hap- 
hazard, riarborless  course  hers  had  seemed  to  be.  Now  she 
must  perhaps  jettison  the  little  cargo  she  carried,  or  would 
it  be  fairer  to  say  that  she  must  decide  whether  she  should 
disembark  it?  It  was  absurd  to  pretend  that  Michael 
would  have  viewed  with  anything  but  dismay  the  surren- 
der of  Lily  to  such  a  one  as  that  croupier,  and  if  she  made 
that  surrender,  she  would  be  violating  his  trust  that 
counted  for  so  much  in  her  aimless  career.  Yet  was  she 
not  attributing  to  Michael  the  sentiment  he  felt  before 
Lily's  betrayal  of  him?  He  had  only  demanded  of  Sylvia 
that  she  should  prevent  Lily  from  drifting  downward  along 
the  dull  road  of  undistinguished  ruin.  If  this  fantastic 
Brazilian  wished  to  marry  her,  why  should  he  not  do  so? 
Then  she  herself  should  be  alone  indeed  and,  unless  a 
miracle  happened,  should  be  lost  in  the  eternal  whirl  of 
vagabonds  to  and  fro  across  the  face  of  the  earth. 

"They  say  one  must  expect  to  be  depressed  after  yellow 
fever,"  Sylvia  reassured  herself.  "Perhaps  this  mood 
won't  last,  but,  oh,  the  endlessness  of  it  all!  How  even 
one's  brush  and  comb  seem  weighed  down  by  an  intermi- 
nable melancholy.  As  I  look  round  me  I  can  see  nothing 
that  doesn't  strike  me  as  hopelessly,  drearily,  appallingly 
superfluous.  The  very  soap  in  its  china  dish  looks  wistful. 
How  pathetic  the  life  of  a  piece  of  soap  is,  when  one  stops 
to  contemplate  it.  A  slow  and  steady  diminution.  Oh, 
I  must  do  something  to  shake  off  this  intolerable  heavi- 
ness!" 

The  simplest  and  most  direct  path  to  energy  and  action 
seemed  to  be  an  attempt  to  interview  Camacho,  and  the 
following  evening  Sylvia  tried  to  make  Lily  divulge  her 
address;  but  she  begged  not  to  be  disturbed,  and  Sylvia, 
seeing  that  she  was  utterly  absorbed  by  the  play,  had  to 
leave  her. 

"Either  I  am  getting  flaccid  beyond  belief,"  she  said  to 
herself,  "or  Lily  has  acquired  an  equally  incredible  deter- 
mination. I  think  it's  the  latter.  It  just  shows  what 
passion  will  do  even  for  a  Lily.  All  her  life  she  has  re- 
mained unmoved,  until  roulette  reveals  itself  to  her  and 
she  finds  out  what  she  was  intended  for.  Of  course  I  must 


Sylvia    Scarlett  287 

leave  her  to  her  fierce  skeleton;  he  represents  the  corollary 
to  the  passion.  Queer  thing,  the  way  she  always  wins. 
I'm  sure  they're  cheating,  somehow,  the  two  of  them. 
There's  the  final  link.  They'll  go  away  presently  to 
Europe,  and  Lily  will  enjoy  the  sweetest  respectability 
that  exists — the  one  that  is  founded  on  early  indiscretion 
and  dishonesty — a  paradise  preceded  by  the  fall." 

Sylvia  waited  by  the  entrance  to  the  roulette-room  on 
the  next  night  until  play  was  finished,  watched  Lily  come 
out  with  Camacho,  and  saw  them  get  into  a  carriage  and 
drive  away  immediately.  None  of  the  attendants  or  the 
other  croupiers  knew  where  Camacho  lived,  or,  if  they 
knew,  they  refused  to  tell  Sylvia.  On  the  fourth  evening, 
therefore,  she  waited  in  a  carriage  by  the  entrance  and 
ordered  her  driver  to  follow  the  one  in  which  Lily  was. 
She  found  that  Camacho's  apartments  were  not  so  far  from 
her  own;  the  next  morning  she  waited  at  the  corner  of  the 
street  until  she  saw  him  come  out;  then  she  rang  the  bell. 
The  negress  who  opened  the  door  shook  her  head  at  the 
notion  of  letting  Sylvia  enter,  but  the  waiting  in  the  sun 
had  irritated  her  and  she  pushed  past  and  ran  up-stairs. 
The  negress  had  left  the  upper  door  open,  and  Sylvia  was 
able  to  enter  the  flat.  Lily  was  in  bed,  playing  with  her 
jewels  as  if  they  were  toys. 

"Sylvia!"  she  cried,  in  alarm.  "He'll  kill  you  if  he  finds 
you  here.  He's  gone  to  fetch  the  priest.  They'll  be  back 
in  a  moment.  Go  away." 

Sylvia  said  she  insisted  on  speaking  to  Camacho;  she 
had  some  good  advice  to  give  him. 

"  But  he's  particularly  jealous  of  you.  The  first  evening 
you  spoke  to  me  .  .  .  look!"  Lily  pointed  to  the  ceiling, 
which  was  marked  like  a  die  with  five  holes.  "He  did  that 
when  he  came  home  to  show  what  he  would  do  to  you." 

"  Rubbish !"  said  Sylvia.  "  He'll  be  like  a  lamb  when  we 
meet.  If  he  hadn't  fired  at  the  ceiling  I  should  have  felt 
much  more  alarmed  for  the  safety  of  my  head." 

"But,  Sylvia,"  Lily  entreated.  "You  don't  know  what 
he's  like.  Once,  when  he  thought  a  man  nudged  me,  he 
came  home  and  tore  all  the  towels  to  pieces  with  his  teeth. 
The  servant  nearly  cried  when  she  saw  the  room  in  the 
morning.  It  was  simply  covered  with  bits  of  towel,  and  he 
19 


288  Sylvia    Scarlett 

swallowed  one  piece  and  nearly  choked.  You  don't 
know  what  he's  like.  I  can  manage  him,  but  nobody 
else  could." 

Here  was  a  new  Lily  indeed,  who  dared  to  claim  that 
she  could  manage  somebody  of  whom  Sylvia  must  be 
afraid.  She  challenged  Lily  to  say  when  she  had  ever 
known  her  to  flinch  from  an  encounter  with  a  man. 

"But,  my  dear,  Manuel  isn't  English.  When  he's  in  one 
of  those  rages  he's  not  like  a  human  being  at  all.  You  can't 
soothe  him  by  arguing  with  him.  You  have  to  calm  him 
without  talking." 

"What  do  you  use?    A  red-hot  poker?" 

Lily  became  agitated  at  Sylvia's  obstinacy,  and,  re- 
gardless of  her  jewels,  which  tinkled  down  into  a  heap 
on  the  floor,  she  jumped  out  of  bed  and  implored  her 
not  to  stay. 

"I  want  to  know  one  or  two  things  before  I  go,"  Sylvia 
said,  and  was  conscious  of  taking  advantage  of  Lily's  alarm 
to  make  her  speak  the  truth,  owing  to  the  lack  of  time  for 
the  invention  of  lies. 

"Do  you  love  this  man?" 

"Yes,  in  a  way  I  do." 

"You  could  be  happy  married  to  him?" 

"Yes,  when  I've  won  five  thousand  pounds." 

"He  cheats  for  you?" 

Lily  hesitated. 

"Never  mind,"  Sylvia  went  on.    "I  know  he  does." 

"Oh,  my  dear,"  Lily  murmured,  biting  her  lip.  "Then 
other  people  might  notice.  Never  mind.  I  ought  to  finish 
to-night.  The  boat  sails  the  day  after  to-morrow." 

"And  what  about  me?"  Sylvia  asked. 

Lily  looked  shamefaced  for  a  moment,  but  the  natural 
optimism  of  the  gambler  quickly  reasserted  itself. 

"I  thought  you  wouldn't  like  to  break  your  contract." 

"My  contract,"  Sylvia  repeated,  bitterly.  "What 
about —  Oh,  but  how  foolish  I  am.  You  dear  unimagina- 
tive creature!" 

"I'm  not  at  all  unimaginative,"  Lily  interposed, 
quickly.  "One  of  the  reasons  why  I  want  to  leave  Brazil 
is  because  the  black  people  here  make  me  nervous.  That's 
why  I  left  our  flat.  I  didn't  know  what  to  do.  I  was  so 


Sylvia    Scarlett  289 

frightened.  I  think  I'm  very  imaginative.  You  got  ill. 
What  was  I  to  do?" 

She  asked  this  like  an  accusation,  and  Sylvia  knew  that 
it  would  be  impossible  to  make  her  see  any  other  point  of 
view. 

"Besides,  it  was  your  fault  I  started  to  gamble.  I 
watched  you  on  the  boat." 

"But  you  were  going  away  without  a  word  to  me?'* 
Sylvia  could  not  refrain  from  tormenting  herself  with  this 
question. 

"Oh  no,  I  was  coming  to  say  good-by,  but  you  don't 
understand  how  closely  he  watches  me." 

The  thought  of  Camacho's  jealous  antics  recurred  to 
Lily  with  the  imminence  of  his  return;  she  begged  Sylvia, 
now  that  all  her  questions  were  answered,  to  escape.  It 
was  too  late;  there  was  a  sound  of  footsteps  upon  the 
stairs  and  the  noise  of  angry  voices  above  deep  gobbles  of 
protested  innocence  from  the  black  servant. 

The  entrance  reminded  Sylvia  of  "II  Barbiere  di 
Siviglia,"  for  when  Camacho  came  leaping  into  the  room, 
as  thin  and  active  as  a  grasshopper,  the  priest  was  holding 
his  coattails  with  one  hand  and  with  the  other  making  the 
most  operatic  gestures  of  despair,  like  Don  Basilic.  In  the 
doorway  the  black  servant  continued  to  gobble  at  every- 
body in  turn,  including  the  Almighty,  to  witness  the  clarity 
of  her  conscience. 

"What  language  do  you  speak?"  Sylvia  asked,  sharply, 
while  Camacho  was  struggling  to  free  himself  from  the 
restraint  of  the  priest. 

"I  speak  English!  Gaddam!  Hell!  Five  hundred 
hells!"  the  croupier  shouted.  "And  I  have  sweared  a 
swore  that  you  will  not  interrupt  between  me  myself  and 
my  Lili." 

Camacho  raised  his  arm  to  shake  his  fist,  and  the  priest 
caught  hold  of  it,  which  made  Camacho  turn  round  and 
open  on  him  with  Portuguese  expletives. 

"When  you've  quite  done  cracking  Brazil  nuts  with 
your  teeth,  perhaps  you'll  listen  to  me,"  Sylvia  began. 

"No,  you  hear  me,  no,  no,  no,  no,  no,  no!"  Camacho 
shouted.  "And  I  will  not  hear  you.  I  have  heard  you 
enough.  You  shall  not  take  her  away.  Putain!" 


290  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"If  you  want  to  be  polite  in  French,"  Sylvia  said. 
"Come  along! 

"Ce  marloupatte  pale  et  mince 
Se  nommait  simplement  Navet, 
Mais  il  vivait  ainsi  qu'un  prince, 
II  aimait  les  femmes  qu'on  rince. 

Tu  comprends?  Mais  moi,  je  ne  suis  pas  une  femme  qu'on 
rince." 

It  was  certainly  improbable,  Sylvia  thought,  that  the 
croupier  had  understood  much  of  Richepin's  verse,  but  the 
effect  of  the  little  recitation  was  excellent  because  it  made 
him  choke.  Lily  now  intervened,  and  when  Sylvia  beheld 
her  soothing  the  inarticulate  Camacho  by  stroking  his 
head,  she  abandoned  the  last  faint  inclination  to  break  off 
this  match  and  called  upon  the  priest  to  marry  them  at 
once.  No  doubt  the  priest  would  have  been  willing  to 
begin  the  ceremony  if  he  had  been  able  to  understand  a 
word  of  what  Sylvia  said,  but  he  evidently  thought  she  was 
appealing  to  him  against  Camacho' s  violence,  and  with  a 
view  to  affording  the  ultimate  assistance  of  which  he  was 
capable  he  crossed  himself  and  turned  up  his  eyes  to 
heaven. 

"What  an  awful  noise  there  is!"  Sylvia  cried,  and,  look- 
ing round  her  with  a  sudden  realization  of  its  volume,  she 
perceived  that  the  negress  in  the  doorway  had  been  rein- 
forced by  what  was  presumably  the  cook — another  negress 
who  was  joining  in  her  fellow-servant's  protestations.  At 
the  same  time  the  priest  was  talking  incessantly  in  rapid 
Portuguese;  Camacho  was  probably  swearing  in  the  same 
language;  and  Lily  was  making  a  noise  that  was  exactly 
half-way  between  a  dove  cooing  and  an  ostler  grooming  a 
horse. 

"Look  here,  Mr.  Camacho,"  Sylvia  began. 

"Oh,  don't  speak  to  him,  Sylvia,"  Lily  implored.  "He 
can't  be  spoken  to  when  he's  like  this.  It's  a  kind  of  ill- 
ness, really." 

Sylvia  paid  no  attention  to  her,  but  continued  to  address 
the  croupier. 

"If  you'll  listen  to  me,  Mr.  Camacho,  instead  of  be- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  291 

having  like  an  exasperated  toy  terrier,  you'll  find  that  we 
both  want  the  same  thing." 

"You  shall  not  have  her,"  tne  croupier  chattered.  "I 
will  shoot  everybody  before  you  shall  have  her." 

"I  don't  want  her,"  Sylvia  screamed.  "I've  come  here 
to  be  a  bridesmaid  or  a  godmother  or  any  other  human 
accessory  to  a  wedding  you  like  to  mention.  Take  her,  my 
dear  man,  she's  yours." 

At  last  Sylvia  was  able  to  persuade  him  that  she  was 
not  to  be  regarded  as  an  enemy  of  his  matrimonial  inten- 
tions, and  after  a  final  burst  of  rage  directed  against  the 
negresses,  whom  he  ejected  from  the  room,  as  a  housemaid 
turns  a  mattress,  he  made  a  speech: 

"I  am  to  marry  Lily.  We  go  to  Portugal,  where  I  am 
not  to  be  a  croupier,  but  a  gentleman.  I  excuse  my  furage. 
You  grant  excusals,  yes?  It  is  a  decomprehence." 

"He's  apologizing,"  Lily  explained  in  the  kind  of  way 
one  might  call  attention  to  the  tricks  of  an  intelligent 
puppy. 

"She's  actually  proud  of  him,"  Sylvia  thought.  "But, 
of  course,  to  her  he  represents  gold  and  diamonds." 

The  priest,  who  had  grasped  that  the  strain  was  being 
relaxed,  began  to  exude  smiles  and  to  rub  his  hands;  he 
sniffed  the  prospect  of  a  fee  so  richly  that  one  seemed  to. 
hear  the  notes  crackle  like  pork.  Camacho  produced  the 
wedding-ring  that  was  even  more  outshone  than  wedding- 
rings  usually  are  by  the  diamonds  of  betrothal. 

"  But  I  can't  be  married  in  my  dressing-gown,"  Lily 
protested. 

Sylvia  felt  inclined  to  say  it  was  the  most  suitable  gar- 
ment, except  a  nightgown,  that  she  could  have  chosen,  but 
in  the  end,  after  another  discussion,  it  was  decided  that  the 
ecclesiastical  ceremony  should  be  performed  to-morrow  in 
church  and  that  to-day  should  be  devoted  to  the  civil  rite. 
Sylvia  promised  not  to  say  a  word  about  the  departure  to 
Europe. 

Three  days  later  Sylvia  went  on  board  the  steamer  to 
make  her  farewells.  She  gave  Lily  a  delicate  little  pistol 
for  a  wedding-present;  from  Lily,  in  memory  of  her  mar- 
riage, she  received  a  box  of  chocolates. 

It  was  impossible  not  to  feel  lonely,  when  Lily  had  gone: 


292  Sylvia    Scarlett 

in  three  and  a  half  years  they  had  been  much  together. 
For  a  while  Sylvia  tried  to  content  herself  with  the  com- 
pany of  the  girls  in  the  pension  d' artistes,  to  which  she  had 
been  forced  to  go  because  the  flat  was  too  expensive  for 
her  to  live  in  now.  Her  illness  had  swallowed  up  any 
money  she  had  saved,  and  the  manager  took  advantage  of 
it  to  lower  her  salary.  When  she  protested  the  manager 
told  her  he  would  be  willing  to  pay  the  original  salary,  if 
she  would  go  to  Sao  Paulo.  Though  Sylvia  understood 
that  the  management  was  trying  to  get  the  best  of  a 
bargain,  she  was  too  listless  to  care  much  and  she  agreed  to 
go.  The  voyage  there  was  like  a  nightmare.  The  boat  was 
full  of  gaudy  negroes  who  sang  endlessly  their  mysterious 
songs;  the  smell  was  vile;  the  food  was  worse;  cock- 
roaches swarmed.  Sao  Paulo  was  a  squalid  reproduction 
of  Rio  de  Janeiro,  and  the  women  who  sang  in  the  cabaret 
were  all  seamed  with  ten  years'  longer  vagabondage  than 
those  at  Rio.  The  men  of  Sao  Paulo  treated  them  with  the 
insolence  of  the  half-breeds  they  all  seemed.  On  the  third 
night  a  big  man  with  teeth  like  an  ancient  fence  and  a 
diamond  in  his  shirt-front  like  a  crystal  stopper  leaned 
over  from  a  box  and  shouted  to  Sylvia  to  come  up  and 
join  him  when  she  had  finished  her  songs;  he  said  other 
things  that  made  her  shake  with  anger.  When  she  left  the 
scene,  the  grand  pimp,  who  was  politely  known  as  the 
manager,  congratulated  Sylvia  upon  her  luck:  she  had 
caught  the  fancy  of  the  richest  patron. 

"You  don't  suppose  I'm  going  to  see  that  goujat  in  his 
box?"  she  growled. 

The  grand  pimp  was  in  despair.  Did  she  wish  to  drive 
away  their  richest  patron?  He  would  probably  open  a 
dozen  bottles  of  champagne.  He  might  .  .  .  the  grand 
pimp  waved  his  arms  to  express  mental  inability  to  express 
all  the  splendors  within  her  grasp.  Presently  the  im- 
patient suitor  came  behind  the  scene  to  know  the  reason  of 
Sylvia's  delay.  He  grasped  her  by  the  wrist  and  tried  to 
drag  her  up  to  his  box.  She  seized  the  only  weapon  in 
reach — a  hand-glass — and  smashed  it  against  his  face. 
The  suitor  roared;  the  grand  pimp  squealed;  Sylvia 
escaped  to  the  stage,  which  was  almost  flush  with  the  main 
dancing-hall.  She  forced  her  way  through  the  orchestra, 


Sylvia  '  Scarlett  293 

kicking  the  instruments  right  and  left,  and  fell  into  the 
arms  of  a  man  more  resplendent  than  the  rest,  but  a 
rastaquouere  of  more  Parisian  cut,  who  in  a  dago-American 
accent  promised  to  plug  the  first  guy  that  tried  to  touch 
her. 

Sylvia  felt  like  Carmen  on  the  arm  of  the  Toreador 
when  she  and  her  protector  walked  out  of  the  cabaret.  He 
was  a  youngish  man,  wearing  a  blue  serge  suit  and  high- 
heeled  shoes  half  buckskin,  half  patent-leather,  tied  with 
white  silk  laces,  so  excessively  American  in  shape  that  one 
looked  twice  to  be  sure  he  was  not  wearing  them  on  the 
wrong  feet.  His  trousers,  after  exhausting  the  ordinary 
number  of  buttons  in  front,  prolonged  themselves  into  a 
kind  of  corselet  that  drew  attention  to  the  slimness  of  his 
waist.  He  wore  a  frilled  white  shirt  sown  with  blue  hearts 
and  a  white  silk  tie  with  a  large  diamond  pin.  The  back 
of  his  neck  was  shaved,  which  gave  his  curly  black  hair  the 
look  of  a  wig.  He  was  the  Latin  dandy  after  being  oper- 
ated upon  in  an  American  barber  shop,  and  his  name  was 
Carlos  Morera. 

Sylvia  noted  his  appearance  in  such  detail,  because  the 
appearance  of  anybody  after  that  monster  in  the  box 
would  have  come  as  a  relief  and  a  diversion.  Morera  had 
led  her  to  a  bar  that  opened  out  of  the  cabaret,  and  after 
placing  two  automatic  pistols  on  the  counter  he  ordered 
champagne  cocktails  for  them  both. 

"He  won't  come  after  you  in  here.  Dat  stiff  don't  feel 
he  would  like  to  meet  Carlos  Morera.  Say,  do  you  know 
why?  Why,  because  Carlos  Morera's  ready  to  plug  any 
stiff  dat  don't  happen  to  suit  his  fancy  right  away.  Dat's 
me,  Carlos  Morera.  I'm  pretty  rich,  I  am.  I'm  a  gentle- 
man, I  am.  But  dat  ain't  going  to  stop  me  using  those"; 
he  indicated  the  pistols.  "Drink  up  and  let's  have  another. 
Don't  you  want  to  drink?  See  here,  then."  He  poured 
Sylvia's  cocktail  on  the  floor.  "Nothing  won't  stop 
Carlos  Morera  if  he  wants  to  call  another  round  of 
drinks.  Two  more  champagne  cocktails!" 

"Is  this  going  to  be  my  Manuel?"  Sylvia  asked  herself. 
She  felt  at  the  moment  inclined  to  let  him  be  anything 
rather  than  go  back  to  the  concert  and  face  that  man  in 
the  box. 


294  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"You're  looking  some  white,"  Morera  commented. 
"I  believe  he  scared  you.  I  believe  I  ought  to  have  shot 
him.  Say,  you  sit  here  and  drink  up.  I  t'ink  I'll  go  back 
and  shoot  him  now.  I  sha'n't  be  gone  long." 

"Sit  still,  you  fire-eater,"  cried  Sylvia,  catching  hold  of 
his  arm. 

"Say,  dat's  good.  Fire-eater!  Yes,  I  believe  I'd  eat 
fire  if  it  came  to  it.  I  believe  you  could  make  me  laugh. 
I'm  going  to  Buenos  Aires  to-morrow.  Why  don't  you 
come  along  of  me?  This  Sao  Paulo  is  a  bum  Brazilian 
town.  You  want  to  see  the  Argentine.  I'll  show  you  lots 
of  life." 

"Look  here,"  said  Sylvia.  "I  don't  mind  coming  with 
you  to  make  you  laugh  and  to  laugh  myself,  but  that's  all. 
Understand?" 

"Dat's  all  right,"  Carlos  agreed.  "I'm  a  funny  kind  of 
a  fellow,  I  am.  As  soon  as  I  found  I  could  buy  any  girl  I 
wanted,  I  didn't  seem  to  want  them  no  more.  'Sides,  I've 
got  seven  already.  You  come  along  of  me.  I'm  good 
company,  I  am.  Everybody  dat  goes  along  of  me  laughs 
and  has  good  fun.  Hear  that?" 

He  jingled  the  money  in  his  pocket  with  a  joyful  rever- 
ence, as  if  he  were  ringing  a  sanctus-bell.  "Now,  you 
come  back  with  me  into  the  cabaret." 

Sylvia  hesitated. 

"Don't  you  worry.  Nobody  won't  dare  to  look  at  you 
when  you're  with  me." 

Morera  put  her  arm  in  his,  and  back  they  walked  into 
the  cabaret  again,  more  than  ever  like  Carmen  with  her 
Toreador.  The  grand  pimp,  seeing  that  Sylvia  was  safely 
protected,  came  forward  with  obeisances  and  apologies. 

"See  here.  Bring  two  bottles  of  champagne,"  Morera 
commanded. 

The  grand  pimp  beckoned  authoritatively  to  a  waiter, 
but  Morera  stood  up  in  a  fury. 

"I  didn't  tell  you  to  bring  a  waiter.  I  told  you  to  bring 
two  bottles  of  champagne.  Bring  them  yourself." 

The  grand  pimp  returned  very  meekly  with  the 
bottles. 

"Dat's  more  like.    Draw  the  cork  of  one." 

The  grand  pimp  asked  if  he  should  put  the  other  on  ice. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  295 

"Don't  you  worry  about  the  other,"  said  Morera. 
"The  other's  only  there  so  I  can  break  it  on  your  damned 
head  in  case  I  get  tired  of  looking  at  you.  See  what  I 
mean  ?" 

The  grand  pimp  professed  the  most  perfect  compre- 
hension. 

"Well,  this  is  a  bum  place,"  Morera  declared,  after  they 
had  sat  for  a  while.  "I  believe  we  sha'n't  get  no  fun  here. 
Let's  quit." 

He  drove  her  back  to  the  pension,  and  the  next  day 
they  took  ship  to  La  Plata  for  Buenos  Aires. 

Morera  insisted  on  Sylvia's  staying  at  an  expensive 
hotel  and  was  very  anxious  for  her  to  buy  plenty  of  new 
evening  frocks. 

"I've  got  a  fancy,"  he  explained,  "to  show  you  a  bit  of 
life.  You  hadn't  seen  life  before  you  came  to  Argentina."- 

The  change  of  air  had  made  Sylvia  feel  much  better,  and 
when  she  had  fitted  herself  out  with  new  clothes,  to  which 
Morera  added  a  variety  of  expensive  and  gaudy  jewels,  she 
felt  quite  ready  to  examine  life  under  his  guidance. 

He  took  her  to  one  or  two  theaters,  to  the  opera,  and  to 
the  casinos;  then  one  evening  he  decided  upon  a  special 
entertainment  of  which  he  made  a  secret. 

"I  want  you  to  dress  yourself  up  fine  to-night,"  he  said. 
"We're  going  to  some  smart  ball.  Put  on  all  your  jewelry. 
I'm  going  to  dress  up  smart,  too." 

Sylvia  had  found  that  overdressing  was  the  best  way  of 
returning  his  hospitality;  this  evening  she  determined  to 
surpass  all  previous  efforts. 

"Heavens!"  she  ejaculated,  when  she  made  the  final 
survey  of  herself  in  the  looking-glass.  "Do  I  look  more 
like  a  Christmas  tree  or  a  chemist's  shop?" 

When  she  joined  Morera  in  the  lounge,  she  saw  that  he 
was  in  evening  dress,  with  diamonds  wherever  it  was 
possible  to  put  them. 

"You're  fine,"  he  said,  contentedly.  "Dat's  the  way  I 
like  to  see  a  goil  look.  I  guess  we're  going  to  have  lots  of 
fun  to-night." 

They  drank  a  good  deal  of  champagne  at  dinner,  and 
about  eleven  o'clock  went  out  to  their  carriage.  When 
the  coachman  was  given  the  address  of  the  ballroom,  he 


296  Sylvia    Scarlett 

looked  round  in  surprise  and  was  sworn  at  for  his  insolence, 
so  with  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders  he  drove  off.  They  left 
the  ordinary  centers  of  amusement  behind  them  and 
entered  a  meaner  quarter  where  half-breeds  and  negroes 
predominated;  at  last  after  a  very  long  drive  they  pulled 
up  before  what  looked  like  a  third-rate  saloon.  Sylvia 
hesitated  before  she  got  out;  it  did  not  seem  at  all  a  suit- 
able environment  for  their  conspicuous  attire. 

"We  shall  have  lots  of  fun,"  Morera  promised.  "This 
is  the  toughest  dancing-saloon  in  Buenos  Aires." 

"It  looks  it,"  Sylvia  agreed. 

They  entered  a  vestibule  that  smelt  of  sawdust,  niggers, 
and  raw  spirits,  and  went  up-stairs  to  a  crowded  hall  that 
was  thick  with  tobacco  smoke  and  dust.  A  negro  band  was 
playing  ragtime  in  a  corner;  all  along  one  side  of  the  hall 
ran  a  bar.  The  dancers  were  a  queer  medley.  The  men 
were  mostly  of  the  Parisian  apache  type,  though  naturally 
more  swarthy;  the  women  were  mostly  in  black  dresses, 
with  shawls  of  brilliantly  colored  silk  and  tawdry  combs  in 
their  back  hair.  There  were  one  or  two  women  dancing  in 
coat  and  skirt  and  hat,  whose  lifted  petticoats  and  pale, 
dissolute  faces  shocked  even  Sylvia's  masculine  tolerance; 
there  was  something  positively  evil  in  their  commonplace 
attire  and  abandoned  motion;  they  were  like  anemic  shop- 
girls possessed  with  unclean  spirits. 

"I  believe  we  shall  make  these  folks  mad,"  said  Morera, 
with  a  happy  chuckle.  Before  Sylvia  could  refuse  he  had 
taken  her  in  his  arms  and  was  dancing  round  the  room  at 
double  time.  The  cracked  mirrors  caught  their  reflections 
as  they  swept  round,  and  Sylvia  realized  with  a  shock  the 
amount  of  diamonds  they  were  wearing  between  them  and 
the  effect  they  must  be  having  in  this  thieves'  kitchen. 

"Some  of  these  guys  are  looking  mad  already,"  Morera 
proclaimed,  enthusiastically. 

The  dance  came  to  an  end,  and  they  leaned  back  against 
the  wall  exhausted.  Several  men  walked  provocatively 
past,  looking  Sylvia  and  her  partner  slowly  up  and  down. 

"Come  along  of  me,"  Morera  said.  "We'll  promenade 
right  around  the  hall." 

He  put  her  arm  in  his  and  swaggered  up  and  down. 
The  other  dancers  were  gathering  in  knots  and  eying  them 


Sylvia    Scarlett  297 

menacingly.  At  last  an  enormous  American  slouched 
across  the  empty  floor  and  stood  in  their  path. 

"Say,  who  the  hell  are  you,  anyway?"  he  asked. 

"Say,  what  the  hell's  dat  to  you?"  demanded  Morera. 

"Quit!"  bellowed  the  American. 

Morera  fired  without  taking  his  hand  from  his  pocket, 
and  the  American  dropped. 

"Hands  up!  Manos  arriba!"  cried  Morera,  pulling  out 
his  two  pistols  and  covering  the  dancers  while  he  backed 
with  Sylvia  toward  the  entrance.  When  they  were  up- 
stairs in  the  vestibule  he  told  her  to  look  if  the  carriage 
were  at  the  door;  when  he  heard  that  it  was  not  he  gave 
a  loud  whoop  of  exultation. 

"I  said  I  believed  we  was  going  to  have  lots  of  fun.  We 
got  to  run  now  and  see  if  any  of  those  guys  can  catch  us." 

He  seized  Sylvia's  arm,  and  they  darted  down  the  steps 
and  out  into  the  street.  Morera  looked  rapidly  right  and 
left  along  the  narrow  thoroughfare.  They  could  hear  the 
noise  of  angry  voices  gathering  in  the  vestibule  of  the 
saloon. 

"This  way  and  round  the  turning,"  he  cried,  pulling 
Sylvia  to  the  left.  There  was  only  one  window  alight  in 
the  narrow  alley  up  which  they  had  turned,  a  dim  orange 
stain  in  the  darkness.  Morera  hammered  on  the  door  as 
their  pursuers  came  running  round  the  corner.  Two  or 
three  shots  were  fired,  but  before  they  were  within  easy 
range  the  door  had  opened  and  they  were  inside.  The  old 
hag  who  had  opened  it  protested  when  she  saw  Sylvia,  but 
Morera  commanded  her  in  Spanish  to  bolt  it,  and  she 
seemed  afraid  to  disobey.  Somewhere  in  a  distant  part  of 
the  house  there  was  a  sound  of  women's  crooning;  out- 
side they  could  hear  the  shuffling  of  their  pursuers'  feet. 

"Say,  this  is  fun,"  Morera  chuckled.  "We've arrived 
into  a  burdel." 

It  was  impossible  for  Sylvia  to  be  angry  with  him,  so 
frank  was  he  in  his  enjoyment  of  the  situation.  The  old 
woman,  however,  was  very  angry  indeed,  for  the  pursuers 
were  banging  upon  her  door  and  she  feared  a  visit  from  the 
police.  Her  clamor  was  silenced  with  a  handful  of  notes. 

"Champagne  for  the  girls,"  Morera  cried. 

For  Sylvia  the  evening  had  already  taken  on  the  nature 


298  Sylvia    Scarlett 

of  a  dream,  and  she  accepted  the  immediate  experience  as 
only  one  of  an  inconsequent  procession  of  events.  Having 
attained  this  state  of  mind,  she  saw  nothing  unusual  in 
sitting  down  with  half  a  dozen  women  who  clung  to  their 
sofas  as  sea-anemones  to  the  rocks  of  an  aquarium.  She 
had  a  fleeting  astonishment  that  they  should  have  names, 
that  beings  so  utterly  indistinguishable  should  be  called 
Juanilla  or  Belita  or  Tula  or  Lola  or  Maruca,  but  the  faint 
shock  of  realizing  a  common  humanity  passed  off  almost  at 
once,  and  she  found  herself  enjoying  a  conversation  with 
Belita,  who  spoke  a  few  words  of  broken  French.  With 
the  circulation  of  the  champagne  the  women  achieved  a 
kind  of  liveliness  and  examined  Sylvia's  jewels  with  mur- 
murs of  admiration.  The  ancient  bawd  who  owned  them 
proposed  a  dance,  to  which  Morera  loudly  agreed.  The 
women  whispered  and  giggled  among  themselves,  looking 
bashfully  over  their  shoulders  at  Sylvia  in  a  way  that  made 
the  crone  thump  her  stick  on  the  floor  with  rage.  She 
explained  in  Spanish  the  cause  of  their  hesitation. 

"They  don't  want  to  take  off  their  clothes  in  front  of 
you,"  Morera  translated  to  Sylvia,  with  apologies  for  such 
modesty  from  women  who  no  longer  had  the  right  to 
possess  even  their  own  emotions;  nevertheless,  he  sug- 
gested that  they  might  be  excused  to  avoid  spoiling  a  jolly 
evening. 

"Good  heavens!  I  should  think  so!"  Sylvia  agreed. 

Morera  gave  a  magnanimous  wave  of  his  arm,  in  which 
he  seemed  to  confer  upon  the  women  the  right  to  keep  on 
their  clothes.  They  clapped  their  hands  and  laughed  like 
children.  Soon  to  the  sound  of  castanets  they  wriggled 
their  bodies  in  a  way  that  was  not  so  much  suggestive  of 
dancing  as  of  flea-bites.  A  lamp  with  a  tin  reflector  jarred 
fretfully  upon  a  shelf,  and  the  floor  creaked. 

Suddenly  Morera  held  up  his  hand  for  silence.  The 
knocking  on  the  street  door  was  getting  louder.  He  asked 
the  old  woman  if  there  was  any  way  of  getting  out  at  the 
back. 

"Dat's  all  right,  kid,"  he  told  Sylvia.  "We  can  crawl 
over  the  dooryards  at  the  back.  Dat  door  in  front  ain't 
going  to  hold  not  more  than  five  minutes." 

He  tore  the  elastic  from  a  bundle  of  notes  and  scattered 


Sylvia    Scarlett  299 

them  in  the  air  like  leaves;  the  women  pounced  upon  the 
largesse  and  were  fighting  with  one  another  on  the  floor 
when  Sylvia  and  Morera  followed  the  old  woman  to  the 
back  door  and  out  into  a  squalid  yard. 

How  they  ever  surmounted  the  various  walls  and  crossed 
the  various  yards  they  encountered  Sylvia  could  never 
understand.  All  she  remembered  was  being  lifted  on 
packing-cases  and  dust-bins,  of  slipping  once  and  crashing 
into  a  hen-coop,  of  tearing  her  dress  on  some  broken  glass, 
of  riding  astride  walls  and  pricking  her  face  against  plants, 
and  of  repeating  to  herself  all  the  time,  "When  lilacs  last 
in  the  dooryard  bloomed."  When  at  last  they  extricated 
themselves  from  the  maze  of  dooryards  they  wandered 
for  a  long  time  through  a  maze  of  narrow  streets.  Sylvia 
had  managed  to  stuff  all  her  jewelry  out  of  sight  into  her 
corsage,  where  it  scratched  her  most  uncomfortably,  but 
any  discomfort  was  preferable  to  the  covetous  eyes  of  the 
half-breeds  that  watched  her  from  the  shadows. 

"  I  guess  you  enjoyed  yourself,"  said  Morera,  in  a  satis- 
fied voice,  when  at  last  they  found  a  carriage  and  leaned 
back  to  breathe  the  gentle  night  air. 

"I  enjoyed  myself  thoroughly,"  said  Sylvia. 

"Dat's  the  way  to  see  a  bit  of  life,"  he  declared.  "What's 
the  good  of  sitting  in  a  bum  theater  all  the  night?  Dat 
don't  amuse  me  any.  I  plugged  him  in  the  leg,"  he  added, 
in  a  tone  of  almost  tender  reminiscence. 

Sylvia  expressed  surprise  at  his  knowing  where  he  had 
hit  him,  and  Morera  was  very  indignant  at  the  idea  of  her 
supposing  that  he  should  shoot  a  man  without  knowing 
exactly  at  what  part  of  him  he  was  aiming  and  where  he 
should  hit  him. 

"Why,  I  might  have  killed  him  dead,"  he  added.  "I 
didn't  want  to  kill  a  man  dead  just  for  a  bit  of  fun.  I 
started  them  guys  off,  see.  They  thought  they'd  got  a 
slob.  Dat's  where  I  was  laughing.  I  guess  I'll  sleep  good 
to-night." 

Sylvia  spent  a  month  seeing  life  with  Carlos  Morera; 
though  she  never  had  another  experience  so  exciting  as  the 
first,  she  passed  a  good  deal  of  her  time  upon  the  verge  of 
melodramatic  adventure.  She  grew  fond  of  this  child-like 
creature  with  his  spendthrift  ostentation  and  bravado. 


300  Sylvia    Scarlett 

He  never  showed  the  least  sign  of  wanting  to  make  love  to 
her,  and  demanded  nothing  from  Sylvia  but  overdressing 
and  admiration  of  his  exploits.  At  the  end  of  the  month 
he  told  Sylvia  that  business  called  him  to  New  York  and 
invited  her  to  come  with  him.  He  let  her  understand, 
however,  that  now  he  wanted  her  as  his  mistress.  Even  if 
she  could  have  tolerated  the  idea,  Sylvia  was  sure  that 
from  the  moment  she  accepted  such  a  position  he  would 
begin  to  despise  her.  She  had  heard  too  many  of  his  con- 
temptuous references  to  the  women  he  had  bought.  She 
refused  to  accompany  him,  on  the  plea  of  wanting  to  go 
back  to  Europe.  Morera  looked  sullen,  and  she  had  a 
feeling  that  he  was  regretting  the  amount  he  had  spent 
upon  her.  Her  pride  found  such  a  sensation  insupportable 
and  she  made  haste  to  return  him  all  his  jewels. 

"Say,  what  sort  of  a  guy  do  you  think  I  am?"  He 
threw  the  jewels  at  her  feet  and  left  her  like  a  spoiled  child. 

An  hour  or  two  later  he  came  back  with  a  necklace  that 
must  have  cost  five  thousand  dollars. 

"  Dat's  the  sort  of  guy  I  am,"  he  said,  and  would  take  no 
refusal  from  her  to  accept  it. 

"You  can't  go  on  spending  money  for  nothing  like  this," 
Sylvia  protested. 

"I  got  plenty,  ha'n't  I?"  he  asked. 

She  nodded. 

"And  I  believe  it's  my  money,  ain't  it?"  he  continued. 

She  nodded  again. 

"Well,  dat  finishes  dat  argument  right  away.  Now  I 
got  another  proposition.  You  listening?  I  got  a  prop- 
osition dat  we  get  married.  I  believe  I  'ain't  met  no  girl 
like  you.  I  know  you've  been  a  cabaret  girl.  Dat  don't 
matter  a  cent  to  me.  You're  British.  Well,  I've  always 
had  a  kind  of  notion  I'd  like  to  marry  a  British  girl.  Don't 
you  tink  I'm  always  the  daffy  guy  you've  bummed  around 
with  in  Buenos  Aires.  You  saw  me  in  dat  dancing-saloon? 
Well,  I  guess  you  know  what  I  can  do.  Dat's  what  I  am 
in  business.  Say,  Sylvia,  will  you  marry  me?" 

She  shook  her  head. 

"My  dear  old  son,  it  wouldn't  work  for  you  or  for  me.'* 
I  don't  see  how  you  figure  dat  out." 

"  I've  figured  it  out  to  seventy  times  seven.    It  wouldn't 


Sylvia    Scarlett  301 

do.  Not  for  another  mad  month  even.  Come,  let's  say 
good-by.  I  want  to  go  to  Europe.  I'm  going  to  have  a 
good  time.  It  '11  be  you  that's  going  to  give  it  to  me. 
My  dear  old  Carlos,  you  may  have  spent  your  money 
badly  from  your  point  of  view,  but  you  haven't  really. 
You  never  spent  any  money  better  in  all  your  life." 

Morera  did  not  bother  her  any  more.  With  all  his 
exterior  foolishness  he  had  a  very  deep  perception  of 
individual  humanity.  There  was  a  boat  sailing  for  Mar- 
seilles in  a  day  or  two,  and  he  bought  a  ticket  for  Sylvia. 

"It's  a  return  ticket,"  he  told  her.  "It's  good  for  a 
year." 

She  assured  him  that  even  if  she  came  back  it  could 
never  be  to  marry  him,  but  he  insisted  upon  her  keeping  it, 
and  to  please  him  she  yielded. 

Sylvia  left  the  Argentine  worth  nearly  as  much  as  Lily 
when  she  went  away  from  Brazil,  and  as  if  her  luck  was 
bent  upon  an  even  longer  run,  she  gained  heavily  at  poker 
all  the  way  back  across  the  Atlantic. 

When  she  reached  Marseilles,  Sylvia  conceived  a  longing 
to  meet  Valentine  again,  and  she  telegraphed  to  Elene  at 
Brussels  for  her  address.  It  was  with  a  quite  exceptional 
anticipation  that  Sylvia  asked  the  concierge  if  Madame 
Lataille  was  in.  While  she  walked  up-stairs  to  her  sister's 
apartment  she  remembered  how  she  had  yearned  to  be 
friends  with  Valentine  nearly  thirteen  years  ago,  forgetting 
all  about  the  disappointment  of  her  hope  in  a  sudden  desire 
to  fill  up  a  small  corner  of  her  present  loneliness. 

Valentine  had  always  lingered  in  Sylvia's  imagination  as 
a  rather  wild  figure,  headstrong  to  such  a  pitch  where 
passion  was  concerned  that  she  herself  had  always  felt 
colorless  and  insignificant  in  comparison.  There  was 
something  splendidly  tropical  about  Valentine  as  she  ap- 
peared to  Sylvia's  fancy;  in  all  the  years  after  she  quitted 
France  she  had  cherished  a  memory  of  Valentine's  fiery 
anger  on  the  night  of  her  departure  as  something  nobly 
independent. 

Like  other  childish  memories,  Sylvia  found  Valentine 
much  less  impressive  when  she  met  her  again — much  less 
impressive,  for  instance,  than  Elene,  who,  though  she  had 
married  a  shopkeeper  and  had  settled  down  to  a  most  un- 


302  Sylvia    Scarlett 

compromising  and  ordinary  respectability,  retained  a 
ripening  outward  beauty  that  made  up  for  any  pinching 
of  the  spirit.  Here  was  Valentine,  scarcely  even  pretty, 
who  achieved  by  neatness  any  effect  of  personality  that 
she  did.  She  had  fine  eyes — it  seemed  impossible  for 
any  of  her  mother's  children  to  avoid  them,  however 
dull  and  inexpressive  might  have  been  the  father's. 
Sylvia  was  thinking  of  Henry's  eyes,  but  what  she 
had  heard  of  M.  Lataille  in  childhood  had  never  led  her 
to  picture  him  as  more  remarkable  outwardly  than  her 
own  father. 

"Twelve  years  since  we  met,"  Valentine  was  murmur- 
ing, and  Sylvia  was  agreeing  and  thinking  to  herself  all  the 
time  how  very  much  compressed  Valentine  was,  not 
uncomfortably  or  displeasingly,  but  like  a  new  dress  before 
it  has  blossomed  to  the  individuality  of  the  wearer.  There 
recurred  to  Sylvia  out  of  the  past  a  likeness  between 
Valentine  and  Maudie  Tilt  when  Maudie  had  dressed  up 
for  the  supper-party  with  Jimmy  Monkley. 

When  the  first  reckonings  of  lapsed  years  were  over 
there  did  not  seem  much  to  talk  about,  but  presently 
Sylvia  described  with  much  detail  the  voyage  from  La 
Plata  to  Marseilles,  just  as,  when  one  takes  up  a  long- 
interrupted  correspondence,  great  attention  is  often  de- 
voted to  the  weather  at  the  moment. 

"  Alors,  vous  etes  chanteuse?"  Valentine  asked. 

"Oui,  je  suis  chanteuse,"  Sylvia  replied. 

Neither  of  the  sisters  used  the  second  person  singular: 
the  conversation,  which  was  desultory,  like  the  conversa- 
tion of  travelers  in  a  railway  carriage,  ended  abruptly  as 
if  the  train  had  entered  a  tunnel. 

"Vous  etes  tres-bien  id"  said  Sylvia,  looking  round. 
The  train  had  emerged  and  was  running  through  a  dull 
cutting. 

"Oui,  je  suis  tres-bien  id,"  Valentine  replied. 

There  was  no  hostility  between  the  sisters;  there  was 
merely  a  blank,  a  sundering  stretch  of  twelve  years,  that 
dismayed  both  of  them  with  its  tracklessness.  Presently 
Sylvia  noticed  a  photograph  upon  the  wall  so  conspicuous- 
ly framed  as  to  justify  a  supposition  that  it  represented 
the  man  who  was  responsible  for  Valentine's  well-being. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  303 

"Oui,  c'est  mon  amant,"  said  Valentine,  in  reply  to  the 
unspoken  question. 

Sylvia  was  faced  by  the  problem  of  commenting  satis- 
factorily upon  a  photograph.  To  begin  with,  it  was  one  of 
those  photographs  that  preserve  the  individual  hairs  of  the 
mustache  but  eradicate  every  line  from  the  face.  It  was 
impossible  to  comment  on  it,  and  it  would  have  been 
equally  impossible  to  comment  on  the  original  in  person. 

-PL  i      r  r  t_         i_  i_ 

1  he  only  tact  emerging  trom  the  photograph  was  that  in 
addition  to  a  mustache  the  subject  of  it  owned  a  pearl  tie- 
pin;  but  even  of  the  genuineness  of  the  pearl  it  was  unable 
to  give  any  assurance. 

"Photographs  tell  one  nothing,  do  they?"  Sylvia  said, 
at  last.  "They're  like  somebody  else's  dreams." 

Valentine  knitted  her  brows  in  perplexity. 

"Or  somebody  else's  baby,"  Sylvia  went  on,  desperately. 

"I  don't  like  babies,"  said  Valentine. 

"  Vraiment  on  est  tres-bien  id"  said  Sylvia. 

She  felt  that  by  flinging  an  accentuated  compliment  to 
the  room  Valentine  might  feel  her  lover  was  included  in 
the  approbation. 

"And  it's  mine,"  said  Valetine,  complacently.  "He 
bought  it  for  me.  C'est  pour  la  vie." 

Passion  might  be  quenched  in  the  slough  of  habitude; 
love's  pinions  might  molt  like  any  farm-yard  hen's.  What 
was  that,  when  the  apartment  was  hers  for  life? 

"How  many  rooms  have  you?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Besides  this  one  I  have  a  bedroom,  a  dining-room,  a 
kitchen,  and  a  bath-room.  Would  you  like  to  see  the  bath- 
room ?" 

When  Valentine  asked  the  last  question  she  was  trans- 
formed; a  latent  exultation  flamed  out  from  her  immo- 
bility. 

I  should  love  to  see  the  bath-room,"  said  Sylvia.  "I 
think  bath-rooms  are  often  the  most  interesting  part  of  a 
house." 

"But  this  is  an  exceptional  bath-room.  It  cost  two 
thousand  francs  to  install." 

Valentine  led  the  way  to  the  admired  chamber,  to  which 
a  complicated  arrangement  of  shining  pipes  gave  an  orches- 
tral appearance.    Valentine  flitted  from  tap  to  tap.    Are- 
20 


304  Sylvia    Scarlett 

tino  himself  could  scarcely  have  imagined  more  methods 
of  sprinkling  water  upon  the  human  body. 

"And  these  pipes  are  for  warming  the  towels,"  she 
explained.  It  was  a  relief  to  find  pipes  that  led  a  compara- 
tively passive  existence  amid  such  a  convolution  of  foun- 
tainous  activity. 

"I  thought  while  I  was  about  it  that  I  would  have  the 
tiles  laid  right  up  to  the  ceiling,"  Valentine  went  on,  pen- 
sively. "And  you  see,  the  ceiling  is  made  of  looking-glass. 
When  the  water  is  very  hot,  qa  fait  drole,  tu  sais,  on  ne  se 
voit  plus." 

It  was  the  first  time  she  had  used  the  second  person 
singular;  the  bath-room  had  created  in  Valentine  some- 
thing that  almost  resembled  humanity. 

"Yes,"  Sylvia  agreed.  "I  suppose  that  is  the  best  way 
of  making  the  ceiling  useful." 

"C'est  pour  la  vie,"  Valentine  contentedly  sighed. 

"But  if  he  were  to  marry?"  Sylvia  ventured. 

"It  would  make  no  difference,"  Valentine  answered. 
"I  have  saved  money  and  with  a  bath-room  like  this  one 
can  always  get  a  good  rent.  Everything  in  the  apartment 
is  mine,  and  the  apartment  is  mine,  too." 

"  Alors,  tu  es  contente?"  said  Sylvia. 

"Oui,  je  suis  contente"  said  Valentine. 

" Elle  est  jolie,  ta  salle  de  bain." 

"Oui,  elle  estjolie  comme  un  amour"  Valentine  assented, 
with  a  sweet  maternal  smile. 

They  talked  of  the  bath-room  for  a  while  when  they 
came  back  to  the  boudoir;  Sylvia  was  conscious  of  dis- 
playing the  politeness  with  which  one  descends  from  the 
nursery  at  an  afternoon  call. 

"Enfin,"  said  Sylvia,    "  Je  file." 

"  Tu  pars  tout  de  suite  de  Marseilles?" 

"Oui,  je  pars  ce  soir." 

She  had  not  really  intended  to  leave  Marseilles  that 
evening,  but  there  seemed  no  reason  to  stay. 

" C'est  dommage  que  tu  n  as  pas  vu  Louis" 

"Ils'appelle  Louis?" 

"Oui,  il  s'appelle  Louis.    II  est  a  Lyon  pour  ses  affaires." 

"Alors,  au  revoir,  Valentine." 

"  Au  revoir,  Sylvie" 


Sylvia    Scarlett  305 

They  hesitated,  both  of  them,  to  see  which  would  offer 
her  cheek  first;  in  the  end  they  managed  to  be  simul- 
taneous. 

"Even  the  farewell  was  a  stalemate,"  Sylvia  said  to  her- 
self on  the  way  down-stairs. 

She  wondered,  while  she  was  walking  back  to  her  hotel, 
what  was  going  to  be  the  passion  of  her  own  life.  One 
always  started  out  with  a  dim  conception  of  perfect  love, 
however  one  might  scoff  at  it  openly  in  self-protection,  but 
evidently  it  by  no  means  followed  that  love  for  a  man,  let 
alone  perfect  love,  would  ever  arrive.  Lily  had  succeeded 
in  inspiring  at  least  one  man  with  love  for  her,  but  she  had 
found  her  own  passion  in  roulette  with  Camacho  tacked  to 
it,  inherited  like  a  husband's  servant,  familiar  with  any 
caprice,  but  jealous  and  irritable.  Valentine  had  found 
her  grand  passion  in  a  bath-room  that  satisfied  even  her 
profoundest  maternal  instincts.  Dorothy  had  loved  a 
coronet  with  such  fervor  that  she  had  been  able  to  aban- 
don everything  that  could  smirch  it.  Sylvia's  own  mother 
had  certainly  found  at  thirty-four  her  grand  passion,  but 
Sylvia  felt  that  it  would  be  preferable  to  fall  in  love  with  a 
bath-room  now  than  wait  ten  years  for  a  Henry. 

Sylvia  reached  the  hotel,  packed  up  her  things,  and  set 
out  to  Paris  without  any  definite  plans  in  her  head  for  the 
future,  and  just  because  she  had  no  definite  plans  and 
nothing  to  keep  her  from  sleeping,  she  could  not  sleep  and 
tossed  about  on  the  wagon-lit  half  the  night. 

"It's  not  as  if  I  hadn't  got  money.  I'm  amazingly 
lucky.  It's  really  fantastic  luck  to  find  somebody  like  poor 
old  Carlos  to  set  me  up  for  five  years  of  luxurious  inde- 
pendence. I  suppose  if  I  were  wise  I  should  buy  a  house  in 
London — and  yet  I  don't  want  to  go  back  to  London. 
The  trouble  with  me  is  that,  though  I  like  to  be  inde- 
pendent, I  don't  like  to  be  alone.  Yet  with  Michael  .  .  . 
But  what's  the  use  of  thinking  about  him?  Do  I  actually 
miss  him?  No,  certainly  not.  He's  nothing  more  to  me 
than  something  I  might  have  had,  but  failed  to  secure. 
I'm  regretting  a  missed  experience.  If  one  loses  somebody 
like  that,  it  leaves  a  sense  of  incompletion.  How  often 
does  one  feel  a  quite  poignant  regret  because  one  has 
forgotten  to  finish  a  cup  of  coffee;  but  the  regret  is  always 


306  Sylvia    Scarlett 

for  the  incomplete  moment;  it  doesn't  endure.  Michael 
in  a  year  will  have  changed;  I've  changed,  also.  There  is 
nothing  to  suggest  that  if  we  met  again  now,  we  should 
meet  in  the  same  relation,  with  the  same  possibility  in  the 
background  of  our  intercourse.  Then  why  won't  I  go  back 
to  Mulberry  Cottage?  Obviously  because  I  have  out- 
lived Mulberry  Cottage.  I  don't  want  to  stop  my  course 
by  running  into  a  backwater  that's  already  been  explored. 
I  want  to  go  on  and  on  until  .  .  .  yes,  until  what?  I  can 
travel  now,  if  I  want  to.  Well,  why  shouldn't  I  travel  ?  If  I 
visit  my  agent  in  Paris — and  I  certainly  shall  visit  him  in 
order  to  tell  him  what  I  think  of  the  management  of  that 
damned  Casino  at  Rio — he'll  offer  me  another  contract  to 
sing  in  some  outlandish  corner  of  the  globe,  and  if  I 
weren't  temporarily  independent,  I  should  have  to  accept 
it  with  all  its  humiliations.  Merely  to  travel  would  be  a 
mistake  I  think.  I've  got  myself  into  the  swirl  of  mounte- 
banks, and  somehow  I  must  continue  with  them.  It's  a 
poor  little  loyalty,  but  even  that  is  better  than  nothing. 
Really,  if  one  isn't  tied  down  by  poverty,  one  can  have  a 
very  good  time,  traveling  the  world  as  a  singer.  Or  I  could 
live  in  Paris  for  a  while.  I  should  soon  meet  amusing 
people.  Oh,  I  don't  know  what  I  want.  I  should  rather 
like  to  get  hold  of  Olive  again.  She  may  be  married  by 
now.  She  probably  is  married.  She's  bound  to  be 
married.  A  superfluity  of  romantic  affection  was  rapidly 
accumulating  that  must  have  been  deposited  somewhere 
by  now.  I  might  get  Gainsborough  out  from  England  to 
come  with  me.  Come  with  me,  where?  It  seems  a  shame 
to  uproot  the  poor  old  thing  again.  She's  nearly  sixty. 
But  I  must  have  somebody." 

When  Sylvia  reached  Paris  she  visited  two  trunks  that 
were  in  a  repository.  Among  other  things  she  took  out 
the  volume  of  Adlington's  Apuleius. 

"Yes,  there's  no  doubt  I'm  still  an  ass,"  she  said.  "And 
since  the  Argentine  really  a  golden  ass;  but  oh,  when, 
when,  when  shall  I  eat  the  rose-leaves  and  turn  into  Sylvia 
again  ?  One  might  make  a  joke  about  that,  as  the  White 
Knight  said,  something  about  Golden  and  Silver  and 
Argentine." 

Thinking  of  jokes  reminded  Sylvia  of  Mr.  Pluepott,  and 


Sylvia    Scarlett  307 

thinking  of  Alice  through  the  looking-glass  brought  back 
the  Vicar.  What  a  long  way  off  they  seemed. 

"I  can't  let  go  of  everybody,"  she  cried.  So  she  tele- 
graphed and  wrote  urgently  to  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  beg- 
ging her  to  join  her  in  Paris.  While  she  was  waiting  for  a 
reply,  she  discussed  projects  for  the  future  with  her  agent, 
who,  when  he  found  that  she  had  some  money,  was  anxious 
for  her  to  invest  a  certain  amount  in  the  necessary  reclame 
and  appear  at  the  Folies  Bergeres. 

"But  I  don't  want  to  make  a  success  by  singing  French 
songs  with  an  English  accent,"  Sylvia  protested.  "I'd  as 
soon  make  a  success  by  singing  without  a  roof  to  my 
mouth.  You  discouraged  me  from  doing  something  I  really 
wanted  to  do.  All  I  want  now  is  an  excuse  for  roaming." 

"What  about  a  tour  in  Spain?"  the  agent  suggested. 
"I  can't  get  you  more  than  ten  francs  a  night,  though,  if 
you  only  want  to  sing.  Still,  Spain's  much  cheaper  than 
America." 

"  Mon  cher  ami,  j'ai  besoin  du  travail  pour  me  distraire. 
Ten  francs  is  the  wage  of  a  slave,  but  pocket-money,  if 
one  is  not  a  slave." 

"  Vous  avez  de  la  veine,  vous." 

"  ^raiment?" 

"Mais  oui." 

"  Peut-etre  quelquun  m'a  plaque" 

He  tried  to  look  grave  and  sympathetic. 

"  Salaud,"  she  mocked.  "  Crois-tu  que  je  fen  dirais. 
Bigre!  je  creverais  plutot." 

She  had  dropped  into  familiarity  of  speech  with  him, 
but  he,  still  hopeful  of  persuading  her  to  intrust  a  profit- 
able reclame  to  him,  continued  to  treat  her  formally. 
Sylvia  realized  the  arriere  pensee  and  laughed  at  him. 

"  Je  ne  suis  pas  encore  en  grande  vedette,  tu  sais." 

He  assured  her  that  such  a  triumph  would  ultimately 
come  to  her,  and  she  scoffed. 

"Mon  vieux,  si  je  n'avais  pas  de  la  galette,  je  pourrais 
crever  de  faim  devant  ta  porte.  Ce  que  tu  me  dis,  c'est  du 
chic." 

"Well,  will  you  go  to  Spain?" 

The  contract  was  signed. 

A  day  or  two  later,  when  she  was  beginning  to  give  up 


308  Sylvia    Scarlett 

hope  of  getting  an  answer  from  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  the  old 
lady  herself  turned  up  at  the  hotel,  looking  not  a  minute 
older. 

"You  darling  and  daring  old  plesiosaurus,"  cried  Sylvia, 
seizing  her  by  the  hand  and  twirling  her  round  the  vesti- 
bule. 

"Yes,  I  am  pleased  to  see  you  and  no  mistake,"  said 
Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "But  what  a  tyrant!  Well,  really, 
I  was  in  me  bed  when  your  telegram  came  and  that  boy 
he  knocked  like  a  tiger.  Knock — knock!  all  the  time  I 
was  trying  to  slip  on  me  petticoat,  which  through  me  being 
in  a  regular  fluster  I  put  on  wrong  way  up  and  got  me  feet 
all  wound  up  with  the  strings.  Knock — knock!  'What- 
ever do  you  think  you're  doing?'  I  said  when  at  last  I  was 
fairly  decent  and  went  to  open  the  door.  'Telegram,'  he 
says,  as  saucy  as  brass.  'Telegram?'  I  said.  'I  thought 
by  the  row  you  was  making  that  you  was  building  St. 
Paul's  Cathedral.'  'Wait  for  the  answer?'  he  said.  'An- 
swer?'I  said.  'Certainly  not.'  Well,  there  was  I  with  your 
telegram  in  one  hand  and  me  petticoat  slipping  down  in 
the  other.  Then  on  the  top  of  that  came  your  letter,  and 
I  couldn't  resist  a  sight  of  you,  my  dearie.  Fancy  that 
Lily  waltzing  ofFlike  that.  And  with  a  Portuguese.  She'll 
get  Portuguese  before  he's  finished  with  her.  Portuguese 
is  what  she'll  be.  And  the  journey!  Well,  really,  I  don't 
know  how  I  managed.  I  kept  on  saying,  'France,'  the 
same  as  if  I  was  asking  a  policeman  the  way  to  Oxford 
Circus,  and  they  bundled  me  about  like  .  .  .  well,  really, 
everybody  was  most  kind.  Still  when  I  got  to  France,  it 
wasn't  much  use  going  on  shouting  'France'  to  everybody. 
However,  I  met  a  nice  young  fellow  in  the  train,  and  he 
very  thoughtfully  assisted  me  into  a  cab  and  .  .  .  well, 
I  am  glad  to  see  you." 

"Now  you're  coming  with  me  to  Spain,"  Sylvia  an- 
nounced. 

'Good  land  alive!    Where?" 

'Spain." 

'Are  you  going  chasing  after  Lily  again?" 

'No,  we're  going  off  on  our  own." 

'Well,  I  may  have  started  on  the  gad  late  in  life,  but 
I've   certainly   started   now,"   said   Mrs.    Gainsborough. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  309 

"Spain?  That's  where  the  Spanish  flies  come  from,  isn't 
it?  Well,  they  ought  to  be  lively  enough,  so  I  suppose  we 
shall  enjoy  ourselves.  And  how  do  we  get  there?" 

"By  train!" 

"Dear  land!  it's  wonderful  what  they  can  do  nowadays. 
What  relation  then  is  Spain  to  Portugal  exactly?  You 
must  excuse  my  ignorance,  Sylvia,  but  really  I'm  still  all 
of  a  fluster.  Fancy  being  bounced  out  of  me  bed  into 
Spain.  You  really  are  a  demon.  Fancy  you  getting 
yellow  fever.  You  haven't  changed  color  much.  Spain! 
Upon  my  word  I  never  heard  anything  like  it.  We'd 
better  take  plenty  with  us  to  eat.  I  knew  it  reminded  me 
of  something.  The  Spanish  Armada!  I  once  heard  a 
clergyman  recite  the  Spanish  Armada,  though  what  it  was 
all  about  I've  completely  forgotten.  There  was  some  fight- 
ing in  it  though.  I  went  with  the  captain.  Well,  if  he 
could  see  me  now.  You  may  be  sure  he's  laughing, 
wherever  he  is.  The  idea  of  me  going  to  Spain." 

The  idea  materialized;  that  night  they  drove  to  the 
Gare  d'Orleans. 


CHAPTER  XII 

'"THE  journey  to  Madrid  was  for  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
1    a  long  revelation  of  human  eccentricity. 

"Not  even  Mrs.  Ewings  would  believe  it,"  she  assured 
Sylvia.  "It's  got  to  be  seen  to  be  believed.  I  opened  my 
mouth  a  bit  wide  when  I  first  came  to  France,  but  France 
is  Peckham  Rye  if  you  put  it  alongside  of  Spain.  When 
that  guard  or  whatever  he  calls  himself  opened  our  door 
and  bobbed  in  out  of  the  runnel  with  the  train  going  full 
speed  and  asked  for  our  tickets,  you  could  have  knocked 
me  down  with  a  feather.  Showing  off,  that's  what  I  call  it. 
And  carrying  wine  inside  of  goats!  Disgusting  I  should 
say.  Nice  set-out  there'd  be  in  England  if  the  brewers 
started  sending  round  beer  inside  of  sheep.  Why,  it  would 
cause  a  regular  outcry;  but  these  Spanish  seem  to  put  up 
with  everything.  I'm  not  surprised  they  come  round  sell- 
ing water  at  every  station.  The  cheek  of  it  though,  when 
you  come  to  think  about  it.  Putting  wine  inside  of  goats 
so  as  to  make  people  buy  water.  If  I'd  have  been  an 
enterprising  woman  like  Mrs.  Marsham,  I  should  have  got 
out  at  the  last  station  and  complained  to  the  police  about 
it.  But  really  the  stations  aren't  fit  for  a  decent  person  to 
walk  about  in.  I'm  not  considered  very  particular,  but 
when  a  station  consists  of  nothing  but  a  signal-box  and  a 
lavatory  and  no  platform,  I  don't  call  it  a  station.  And 
what  a  childish  way  of  starting  a  train — blowing  a  toy 
horn  like  that.  More  like  a  school  treat  than  a  railway 
journey.  And  the  turkeys!  Now  I  ask  you,  Sylvia,  would 
you  believe  it?  Four  turkeys  under  the  seat  and  three  on 
the  rack  over  me  head.  A  regular  Harlequinade!  And 
every  time  anybody  takes  out  a  cigarette  or  a  bit  of  bread 
they  offer  it  all  around  the  compartment.  Fortunately 
I  don't  look  hungry,  or  they  might  have  been  offended. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  311 

No  wonder  England's  full  of  aliens.  I  shall  explain  the 
reason  of  it  when  I  get  home." 

The  place  of  entertainment  where  Sylvia  worked  was 
called  the  Teatro  Japones,  for  what  reason  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  say.  The  girls  were,  as  usual,  mostly 
French,  but  there  were  one  or  two  Spanish  dancers  that, 
as  Mrs.  Gainsborough  put  it,  kept  one  "  rum-tum-tum- 
ming  in  one's  seat  all  the  time  it  was  going  on."  Sylvia 
found  Madrid  a  dull  city  entirely  without  romance  of 
aspect,  nor  did  the  pictures  in  the  Prado  make  up  for  the 
bull-ring's  wintry  desolation.  Mrs.  Gainsborough  con- 
sidered the  most  remarkable  evidence  of  Spanish  eccentric- 
ity was  the  way  in  which  flocks  of  turkeys,  after  traveling 
in  passenger-trains,  actually  wandered  about  the  chief 
thoroughfares. 

"Suppose  if  I  was  to  go  shooing  across  Piccadilly  with  a 
herd  of  chickens,  let  alone  turkeys,  well,  it  would  be  a 
circus,  and  that's  a  fact." 

When  they  first  arrived  they  stayed  at  a  large  hotel  in 
the  Puerta  del  Sol,  but  Mrs.  Gainsborough  got  into 
trouble  with  the  baths,  partly  because  they  cost  five 
pesetas  each  and  partly  because  she  said  it  went  to  her 
heart  to  see  a  perfectly  clean  sheet  floating  about  in  the 
water.  After  that  they  tried  a  smaller  hotel,  where  they 
were  fairly  comfortable,  though  Mrs.  Gainsborough  took 
a  long  time  to  get  used  to  being  brought  chocolate  in  the 
morning. 

"I  miss  my  morning  tea,  Sylvia,  and  it's  no  use  me 
pretending  I  don't.  I  don't  feel  like  chocolate  in  the 
morning.  I'd  just  as  lieve  have  a  slice  of  plum-pudding  in 
a  cup.  Why,  if  you  try  to  put  a  lump  of  sugar  in,  it  won't 
sink;  it  keeps  bobbing  up  like  a  kitten.  And  another 
thing  I  can't  seem  to  get  used  to  is  having  the  fish  after 
the  meat.  Every  time  it  comes  in  like  that  it  seems  a 
kind  of  carelessness.  What  fish  it  is,  too,  when  it  does 
come.  Well,  they  say  a  donkey  can  eat  thistles,  but  it 
would  take  him  all  his  time  to  get  through  one  of  those 
fish.  No  wonder  they  serve  them  after  the  meat.  I  should 
think  they  were  afraid  of  the  amount  of  meat  any  one 
might  eat,  trying  to  get  the  bones  out  of  one's  throat. 
I've  felt  like  a  pincushion  ever  since  I  got  to  Madrid,  and 


3i2  Sylvia    Scarlett 

how  you  can  sing  beats  me.  Your  throat  must  be  like  a 
zither  by  now."  , 

It  really  did  not  seem  worth  while  to  remain  any  longer 
in  Madrid,  and  Sylvia  asked  to  be  released  from  her 
contract.  The  manager,  who  had  been  wondering  to  all 
the  other  girls  why  Sylvia  had  ever  been  sent  to  him,  dis- 
covered that  she  was  his  chief  attraction  when  she  wanted 
to  break  the  contract.  However,  a  hundred  pesetas  in  his 
own  pocket  removed  all  objections,  and  she  was  free  to 
leave  Spain. 

"Well,  do  you  want  to  go  home?"  she  asked  Mrs. 
Gainsborough.  "Or  would  you  come  to  Seville?" 

"Now  we've  come  so  far,  we  may  as  well  go  on  a  bit 
farther,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  thought. 

Seville  was  very  different  from  Madrid. 

"  Really,  when  you  see  oranges  growing  in  the  streets," 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  said,  "you  begin  to  understand  why 
people  ever  goes  abroad.  Why,  the  flowers  are  really 
grand,  Sylvia.  Carnations  as  common  as  daisies.  Well, 
I  declare,  I  wrote  home  a  post-card  to  Mrs.  Beardmore 
and  told  her  Seville  was  like  being  in  a  conservatory.  She's 
living  near  Kew  now,  so  she'll  understand  my  meaning." 

They  both  much  enjoyed  the  dancing  in  the  cafes,  when 
solemn  men  hurled  their  sombreros  on  the  dancers'  plat- 
form to  mark  their  appreciation  of  the  superb  creatures 
who  flaunted  themselves  there  so  gracefully. 

"But  they're  bold  hussies  with  it  all,  aren't  they?" 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  observed.  "Upon  me  word,  /  wouldn't 
care  to  climb  up  there  and  swing  my  hips  about  like 
that." 

From  Seville,  after  an  idle  month  of  exquisite  weather, 
often  so  warm  that  Sylvia  could  sit  in  the  garden  of  the 
Alcazar  and  read  in  the  shade  of  the  lemon-trees,  they  went 
to  Granada. 

"So  they've  got  an  Alhambra  here,  have  they?"  said 
Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "But  from  what  I've  seen  of  the 
performances  in  Spain  it  won't  come  up  to  good  old 
Leicester  Square." 

On  Sylvia  the  Alhambra  cast  an  enchantment  more 
powerful  than  any  famous  edifice  she  had  yet  seen.  Her 
admiration  of  cathedrals  had  always  been  tempered  by  a 


Sylvia    Scarlett  313 

sense  of  missing  most  of  what  they  stood  for.  They  were 
still  exercising  their  functions  in  a  modern  world  and 
thereby  overshadowed  her  personal  emotions  in  a  way  that 
she  found  most  discouraging  to  the  imagination.  The 
Alhambra,  which  once  belonged  to  kings,  now  belonged  to 
individual  dreams.  Those  shaded  courts  where  even  at 
midday  the  ice  lay  thick  upon  the  fountains;  that  sudden 
escape  from  a  frozen  chastity  of  brown  stone  out  on  the 
terraces  rich  with  sunlight;  that  vision  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada  leaping  against  the  blue  sky  with  all  its  snowy 
peaks;  this  incredible  meeting  of  East  and  South  and 
North — to  know  all  these  was  to  stand  in  the  center  of  the 
universe,  oneself  a  king. 

"What's  it  remind  you  of,  Sylvia?"  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
asked 

"Everything,"  Sylvia  cried.  She  felt  that  it  would  take 
but  the  least  effort  of  will  to  light  in  one  swoop  upon  the 
Sierra  Nevada  and  from  those  bastions  storm  .  .  .  what? 

"It  reminds  me  just  a  tiddly-bit  of  Earl's  Court,"  said 
Mrs.  Gainsborough,  putting  her  head  on  one  side  like  a 
meditative  hen.  "If  you  shut  one  eye  against  those 
mountains,  you'll  see  what  I  mean." 

Sylvia  came  often  by  herself  to  the  Alhambra;  she  had 
no  scruples  in  leaving  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  who  had  made 
friends  at  the  pension  with  a  lonely  American  widower. 

"  He  knows  everything,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "  I've 
learned  more  in  a  fortnight  with  him  than  I  ever  learned 
in  my  whole  life.  What  that  man  doesn't  know!  Well, 
I'm  sure  it's  not  worth  knowing.  He's  been  in  trade  and 
never  been  able  to  travel  till  now,  but  he's  got  the  world 
off  by  heart,  as  you  might  say.  I  sent  a  p.  c.  to  Mrs. 
Ewings  to  say  I'd  found  a  masher  at  last.  The  only  thing 
against  him  is  the  noises  he  makes  with  his  throat.  I  gave 
him  some  lozenges  at  first,  but  he  made  more  noise  than 
ever  sucking  them,  and  I  had  to  desist." 

Soon  after  Mrs.  Gainsborough  met  her  American,  Sylvia 
made  the  acquaintance  of  a  youth  fulguide  of  thirteen  or 
fourteen  years,  who  for  a  very  small  wage  adopted  her  and 
gave  her  much  entertainment.  Somehow  or  other  Rodrigo 
had  managed  to  pick  up  a  good  deal  of  English  and  French, 
which,  as  he  pointed  out,  enabled  him  to  compete  with  the 


314  Sylvia    Scarlett 

older  guides  who  resented  his  intrusion.  Rodrigo  did  not 
consider  that  the  career  of  a  guide  was  worthy  of  real 
ambition.  For  the  future  he  hesitated  between  being  a 
gentleman's  servant  and  a  tobacconist  in  Gibraltar.  He 
was  a  slim  child  with  the  perfect  grace  of  the  young  South 
in  movements  and  in  manners  alike. 

Rodrigo  was  rather  distressed  at  the  beginning  by 
Sylvia's  want  of  appetite  for  mere  sight-seeing;  he  re- 
proved her  indeed  very  gravely  for  wasting  valuable  time 
in  repeating  her  visits  to  favorite  spots  while  so  many 
others  remained  unvisited.  He  was  obsessed  by  the  ra- 
pidity with  which  most  tourists  passed  through  Grana- 
da, but  when  he  discovered  that  Sylvia  had  no  intention 
of  hurrying  or  being  hurried,  his  native  indolence  blos- 
somed to  her  sympathy  and  he  adapted  himself  to  her 
pleasure  in  sitting  idle  and  dreaming  in  the  sun. 

Warmer  weather  came  in  February,  and  Rodrigo  sug- 
gested that  the  Alhambra  should  be  visited  by  moonlight. 
He  did  not  make  this  suggestion  because  it  was  the  custom 
of  other  English  people  to  desire  this  experience;  he 
realized  that  the  Senorita  was  not  influenced  by  what  other 
people  did;  at  the  same  time  the  Alhambra  by  moonlight 
could  scarcely  fail  to  please  the  Senorita' s  passion  for 
beauty.  He  himself  had  a  passion  for  beauty,  and  he 
pledged  his  word  she  would  not  regret  following  his  advice; 
moreover,  he  would  bring  his  guitar. 

On  a  February  night,  when  the  moon  was  still  high, 
Sylvia  and  Rodrigo  walked  up  the  avenue  that  led  to  the 
Alhambra.  There  was  nobody  on  the  summit  but  them- 
selves. Far  down  lights  flitted  in  the  gipsy  quarter,  and 
there  came  up  a  faint  noise  of  singing  and  music. 

It  was  Carnival,  Rodrigo  explained,  and  the  Senorita 
would  have  enjoyed  it;  but,  alas!  there  were  many  rascals 
about  on  such  nights,  and  though  he  was  armed,  he  did  not 
recommend  a  visit.  He  brought  out  his  guitar;  from 
beneath  her  Spanish  cloak  Sylvia  also  brought  out  a 
guitar. 

"The  Senorita  plays  ?  Maravilloso!"  Rodrigo  exclaimed. 
"But  why  the  Senorita  did  not  inform  me  to  carry  her 
guitar?  The  hill  was  long.  The  Senorita  will  be  tired." 

Sylvia  opened  with  one  of  her  old  French  songs,  after 


Sylvia    Scarlett  315 

which  Rodrigo,  who  had  paid  her  a  courteous  and  critical 
attention,  declared  that  she  had  a  musician's  soul  like  him- 
self, and  forthwith,  in  a  treble  that  was  limpid  as  the  moon, 
light,  unpassionate  as  the  snow,  remote  as  the  mountains, 
he  too  sang. 

"Exquisite,"  Sylvia  sighed. 

The  Senorita  was  too  kind,  and  as  if  to  disclaim  the 
compliment  he  went  off  into  a  mad  gipsy  tune.  Suddenly 
he  broke  off. 

"Hark!    Does  the  Senorita  hear  a  noise  of  weeping?" 

There  was  indeed  a  sound  of  some  one's  crying,  a  sound 
that  came  nearer  every  moment. 

"It  is  most  unusual  to  hear  a  sound  of  weeping  in  the 
Alhambra  au  clair  de  la  lune"  said  Rodrigo.  "If  the 
Senorita  will  permit  me,  I  shall  find  out  the  cause." 

Soon  he  came  back  with  a  girl  whose  cheeks  glistened 
with  tears. 

"She  is  a  dancer,"  Rodrigo  explained.  "She  says  she  is 
Italian,  but — '  With  a  shrug  of  the  shoulders  he  gave 
Sylvia  to  understand  that  he  accepted  no  responsibility 
for  her  statement.  It  was  Carnival. 

Sylvia  asked  the  new-comer  in  French  what  was  the 
matter,  but  for  some  time  she  could  only  sob  without 
saying  a  word.  Rodrigo,  who  was  regarding  her  with  a 
mixture  of  disapproval  and  compassion,  considered  that 
she  had  reached  the  stage — he  spoke  with  all  possible 
respect  for  the  Senorita,  who  must  not  suppose  herself 
included  in  his  generalization — the  stage  of  incoherence 
that  is  so  much  more  frequent  with  women  than  with  men 
whose  feelings  have  been  upset.  If  he  might  suggest  a 
remedy  to  the  Senorita,  it  would  be  to  leave  her  alone  for 
a  few  minutes  and  continue  the  interrupted  music.  They 
had  come  here  to  enjoy  the  Alhambra  by  moonlight;  it 
seemed  a  pity  to  allow  the  grief  of  an  unknown  dancer  to 
spoil  the  beauty  of  the  scene,  grief  that  probably  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  Alhambra,  but  was  an  echo  of  the 
world  below.  It  might  be  a  lovers'  quarrel  due  to  the 
discovery  of  a  masked  flirtation,  a  thing  of  no  importance 
compared  with  the  Alhambra  by  moonlight. 

"I'm  not  such  a  philosopher  as  you,  Rodrigo.  I  am  a 
poor,  inquisitive  woman." 


316  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Certainly  inquisitiveness  might  be  laid  to  the  charge  of 
the  feminine  sex,  he  agreed,  but  not  to  all.  There  must  be 
exceptions,  and  with  a  gesture  expressive  of  tolerance  for 
the  weaknesses  of  womankind  he  managed  to  convey  his 
intention  of  excepting  Sylvia  from  Eve's  heritage.  Human 
nature  was  not  all  woven  to  the  same  pattern.  Many  of 
his  friends,  for  instance,  would  fail  to  appreciate  the 
Alhambra  on  such  a  night,  and  would  prefer  to  blow  horns 
in  the  streets. 

By  this  time  the  grief  of  the  stranger  was  less  noisy,  and 
Sylvia  again  asked  her  who  she  was  and  why  she  was  weep- 
ing. She  spoke  in  English  this  time;  the  fair,  slim  child, 
for  when  one  looked  at  her  she  was  scarcely  more  than 
fifteen,  brightened. 

"I  don't  know  where  I  was,"  she  said. 

Rodrigo  clicked  his  tongue  and  shook  his  head;  he 
was  shocked  by  this  avowal  much  more  deeply  than 
in  his  sense  of  locality.  Sylvia  was  puzzled  by  her 
accent.  The  SvV  were  nearly  'v's,'  but  the  intonation 
was  Italian. 

"And  you're  a  dancer?"  she  asked. 

"Yes,  I  was  dancing  at  the  Estrella." 

Rodrigo  explained  that  this  was  a  cabaret,  the  kind  of 
place  with  which  the  Senorita  would  not  be  familiar. 

"And  you're  Italian?" 

The  girl  nodded,  and  Sylvia,  seeing  that  it  would  be 
impossible  to  extract  anything  about  her  story  in  her 
present  overwrought  state,  decided  to  take  her  back  to  the 
pension. 

"And  I  will  carry  the  Senorita's  guitar,"  said  Rodrigo. 
"To-morrow  morning  at  eleven  o'clock?"  he  asked  by  the 
gate  of  Sylvia's  pension.  "Or  would  the  Senorita  prefer 
that  I  waited  to  conduct  the  senorita  extraviada?" 

Sylvia  bade  him  come  in  the  morning;  with  a  deep  bow 
to  her  and  to  the  stranger  he  departed,  twanging  his  guitar. 
Mrs.  Gainsborough,  who  by  this  time  had  reached  the 
point  of  thinking  that  her  American  widower  existed  only 
to  be  oracular,  wished  to  ask  his  advice  about  the  stranger, 
and  was  quite  offended  with  Sylvia  for  telling  her  rather 
sharply  that  she  did  not  want  all  the  inmates  of  the  pen- 
sion buzzing  round  the  frightened  child. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  317 

"Chocolate  would  be  more  useful  than  advice,"  Sylvia 
said. 

"I  know  you're  very  down  on  poor  Mr.  Linthicum,  but 
he's  a  mass  of  information.  Only  this  morning  he  was 
explaining  how  you  can  keep  eggs  fresh  for  a  year  by  put- 
ting them  in  a  glass  of  water.  Now  I  like  a  bit  of  advice. 
I'm  not  like  you,  you  great  harum-scarum  thing." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  unable  to  remain  very  long  in  a 
state  of  injured  dignity;  she  soon  came  up  to  Sylvia's  bed- 
room with  cups  of  chocolate. 

"And  though  you  laugh  at  poor  Mr.  Linthicum,"  she 
said,  "it's  thanks  to  him  you've  got  this  chocolate  so 
quick,  for  he  talked  to  the  servant  himself." 

With  this  Mrs.  Gainsborough  left  the  room  in  high  good 
humor  at  the  successful  rehabilitation  of  the  informative 
widower. 

The  girl,  whose  name  was  Concetta,  had  long  ceased  to 
lament,  but  she  was  still  very  shy,  and  Sylvia  found  it 
extremely  difficult  at  first  to  reach  any  clear  comprehen- 
sion of  her  present  trouble.  Gradually,  however,  by  let- 
ting her  talk  in  her  own  breathless  way,  and  in  an  odd 
mixture  of  English,  French,  German,  and  Italian,  she  was 
able  to  put  together  the  facts  into  a  kind  of  consecutive- 
ness. 

Her  father  had  been  an  Italian,  who  for  some  reason 
that  was  not  at  all  clear  had  lived  at  Aix-la-Chapelle.  Her 
mother,  to  whom  he  had  apparently  never  been  married, 
had  been  a  Fleming.  This  mother  had  died  when  Concetta 
was  about  four,  and  her  father  had  married  a  German 
woman  who  had  beaten  her,  particularly  after  her  father 
had  either  died  or  abandoned  his  child  to  the  stepmother — 
it  was  not  clear  which.  At  this  point  an  elder  brother  ap- 
peared in  the  tale,  who  at  the  age  of  eleven  had  managed 
to  steal  some  money  and  run  away.  Of  this  brother  Con- 
cetta had  made  an  ideal  hero.  She  dreamed  of  him  even 
now  and  never  came  to  any  town  but  that  she  expected  to 
meet  him  there.  Sylvia  had  asked  her  how  she  expected 
to  recognize  somebody  who  had  disappeared  from  her  life 
when  she  was  only  six  years  old,  but  Concetta  insisted 
that  she  should  know  him  again.  When  she  said  this,  she 
looked  round  her  with  an  expression  of  fear  and  asked  if 


318  Sylvia    Scarlett 

anybody  could  overhear  them.     Sylvia  assured  her  that 
they  were  quite  alone,  and  Concetta  said  in  a  whisper: 

"Once  in  Milano  I  saw  Francesco.  Hush!  he  passed  in 
tne  street,  and  I  said,  'Francesco,'  and  he  said,  'Concet- 
tina,'  but  we  could  not  speak  together  more  longer." 

Sylvia  would  not  contest  this  assertion,  though  she  made 
up  her  mind  that  it  must  have  been  a  dream. 

"It  was  a  pity  you  could  not  speak,"  she  said. 

"Yes,  nothing  but  Francesco  and  Concettina  before  he 
was  gone.  Peccato!  Peccato!" 

Francesco's  example  had  illuminated  his  sister's  life, 
with  the  hope  of  escaping  from  the  stepmother,  and  she 
had  hoarded  pennies  month  after  month  for  three  years. 
She  would  not  speak  in  detail  of  the  cruelty  of  her  step- 
mother; the  memory  of  it  even  at  this  distance  of  time  was 
too  much  charged  with  horror.  It  was  evident  to  Sylvia 
that  she  had  suffered  exceptional  things  and  that  this  was 
no  case  of  ordinary  unkindness.  There  was  still  in  Con- 
cetta's  eyes  the  look  of  an  animal  in  a  trap,  and  Sylvia  felt 
a  rage  at  human  cruelty  hammering  upon  her  brain.  One 
read  of  these  things  with  an  idle  shudder,  but,  oh,  to  be- 
hold before  one  a  child  whose  very  soul  was  scarred. 
There  was  more  for  the  imagination  to  feed  upon,  because 
Concetta  said  that  not  only  was  her  stepmother  cruel,  but 
also  her  school-teachers  and  schoolmates. 

"Everybody  was  liking  to  beat  me.  I  don't  know  why, 
but  they  was  liking  to  beat  me;  no,  really,  they  was  liking 
it." 

At  last,  and  here  Concetta  was  very  vague,  as  if  sne  were 
seeking  to  recapture  the  outlines  of  a  dream  that  fades  in 
the  light  of  morning,  somehow  or  other  she  ran  away  and 
arrived  at  a  big  place  with  trees  in  a  large  city. 

"Where,  at  Aix-la-Chapelle?" 

"No,  I  got  into  a  train  and  came  somewhere  to  a  big 
place  with  trees  in  the  middle  of  a  city." 

"Was  it  a  park  in  Brussels?" 

She  shrugged  her  shoulders  and  came  back  to  her  tale. 
In  this  park  she  had  met  some  little  girls  who  had  played 
with  her;  they  had  played  a  game  of  joining  hands  and 
dancing  round  in  a  circle  until  they  all  fell  down  in  the 
grass.  A  gentleman  had  laughed  to  see  them  amusing 


Sylvia    Scarlett  319 

themselves  so  much,  and  the  little  girls  had  asked  her  to 
come  with  them  and  the  gentleman;  they  had  danced 
round  him  and  pulled  his  coat  to  make  him  take  Concetta. 
He  had  asked  her  whence  she  came  and  whither  she  was 
going;  he  was  a  schoolmaster  and  he  was  going  far  away 
with  all  these  other  little  girls.  Concetta  had  cried  when 
they  were  leaving  her,  and  the  gentleman,  when  he  found 
that  she  was  really  alone  in  this  big  city,  had  finally  been 
persuaded  to  take  her  with  him.  They  went  far  away  in 
the  train  to  Dantzic,  where  he  had  a  school  to  learn  danc- 
ing. She  had  been  happy  there;  the  master  was  very  kind. 
When  she  was  thirteen  she  had  gone  with  the  other  girls 
from  the  school  to  dance  in  the  ballet  at  La  Scala  in  Milan, 
but  before  that  she  had  danced  at  Dresden  and  Munich. 
Then  about  six  months  ago  a  juggler  called  Zozo  had 
wanted  her  and  another  girl  to  join  his  act.  He  was  a 
young  man;  she  had  liked  him  and  she  had  left  Milan 
with  him.  They  had  performed  in  Rome  and  Naples  and 
Ban  and  Palermo.  At  Palermo  the  other  girl  had  gone 
back  to  her  home  in  Italy,  and  Concetta  had  traveled  to 
Spain  with  Zozo  through  Tunis  and  Algiers  and  Oran. 
Zozo  had  treated  her  kindly  until  they  came  here  to  the 
Estrella  Concert;  but  here  he  had  changed  and,  when  she 
did  not  like  him  to  make  love  to  her,  he  had  beaten  her. 
To-night  before  they  went  to  the  cabaret  he  had  told  her 
that  unless  she  would  let  him  love  her  he  would  throw  the 
daggers  at  her  heart.  In  their  act  she  was  tied  up  and  he 
threw  daggers  all  round  her.  She  had  been  frightened, 
and  when  he  went  to  dress  she  had  run  away;  but  the 
streets  were  full  of  people  in  masks,  and  she  had  lost  her- 
self. 

Sylvia  looked  at  this  child  with  her  'fair  hair,  who  but 
for  the  agony  and  fear  in  her  blue  eyes  would  have  been 
like  one  of  those  rapturous  angels  in  old  Flemish  pictures. 
Here  she  sat,  as  ten  years  ago  Sylvia  had  sat  in  the  cab- 
shelter  talking  to  Fred  Organ.  Her  story  and  Concetta's 
met  at  this  point  in  man's  vileness. 

"My  poor  little  thing,  you  must  come  and  live  with  me," 
cried  Sylvia,  clasping  Concetta  in  her  arms.  "I  too  am  all 
alone,  and  I  should  love  to  feel  that  somebody  was  de- 
pendent on  me.  You  shall  come  with  me  to  England. 
21 


320  Sylvia    Scarlett 

You're  just  what  I've  been  looking  for.    Now  I'm  going  to 
put  you  to  bed,  for  you're  worn  out." 

"But  he'll  come  to  find  me,"  Concetta  gasped,  in  sudden 
affright.  "He  was  so  clever.  On  the  program  you  can 
read.  ZOZO:  el  mejor  prestigitador  del  mundo.  He  knows 
everything." 

"We  must  introduce  him  to  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  She 
likes  encyclopedias  with  pockets." 

"Please?" 

"I  was  talking  to  myself.  My  dear,  you'll  be  perfectly 
safe  here  with  me  from  the  greatest  magician  in  the 
world." 

In  the  end  she  was  able  to  calm  Concetta's  fears;  in 
sleep,  when  those  frightened  eyes  were  closed,  she  seemed 
younger  than  ever,  and  Sylvia  brooded  over  her  by  candle- 
light as  if  she  were  indeed  her  child. 

Mrs.  Gainsborough,  on  being  told  next  morning  Con- 
cetta's story  and  Sylvia's  resolve  to  adopt  her,  gave  her 
blessing  to  the  plan. 

"Mulberry  Cottage  '11  be  nice  for  her  to  play  about  in. 
She'll  be  able  to  dig  in  the  garden.  We'll  buy  a  bucket  and 
spade.  Fancy,  what  wicked  people  there  are  in  this  world. 
But  I  blame  her  stepmother  more  than  I  do  this  Shou- 
shou." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  persisted  in  treating  Concetta  as  if 
she  were  about  nine  years  old  and  was  continually  thinking 
of  toys  that  might  amuse  her.  When  at  last  she  was 
brought  to  realize  that  she  was  fifteen,  she  was  greatly  dis- 
appointed on  behalf  of  Mr.  Linthicum,  to  whom  she  had 
presented  Concetta  as  an  infant  prodigy. 

"He  commented  so  much  on  the  languages  she  could 
speak,  and  he  told  her  of  a  quick  way  to  practise  elemental 
American,  which  I  always  thought  was  the  same  as  Eng- 
lish, but  apparently  it's  not.  It's  a  much  older  language, 
really,  and  came  over  with  Christopher  Columbus  in  the 
Mayflower" 

Rodrigo  was  informed  by  Sylvia  that  henceforth  the 
Senorita  Concetta  would  live  with  her.  He  expressed  no 
surprise  and  accepted  with  a  charming  courtliness  the  new 
situation  at  the  birth  of  which  he  had  presided.  Sylvia 
thought  it  might  be  prudent  to  take  Rodrigo  so  far  into  her 


Sylvia    Scarlett  321 

confidence  as  to  give  him  a  hint  about  a  possible  attempt 
by  the  juggler  to  get  Concetta  back  into  his  power.  Rod- 
rigo  looked  very  serious  at  the  notion,  and  advised  the 
Senorita  to  leave  Granada  quickly.  It  was  against  his 
interest  to  give  this  counsel,  for  he  should  lose  his  Senorita, 
the  possession  of  whom  had  exposed  him  to  a  good  deal  of 
envy  from  the  other  guides.  Besides,  he  had  grown  fond 
of  the  Senorita  and  he  should  miss  her.  He  had  intended 
to  practise  much  on  his  guitar  this  spring,  and  he  had 
looked  forward  to  hearing  the  nightingales  with  her;  they 
would  be  singing  next  month  in  the  lemon-groves.  Many 
people  were  deaf  to  the  song  of  birds,  but  personally  he 
could  not  listen  to  them  without  ...  a  shrug  of  the 
shoulders  expressed  the  incommunicable  emotion. 

"You  shall  come  with  us,  Rodrigo." 

"To  Gibraltar?"  he  asked,  quickly,  with  flashing  eyes. 

"Why  not?"  said  Sylvia. 

He  seized  her  hand  and  kissed  it. 

"El  destino,"  he  murmured.  "I  shall  certainly  see  there 
the  tobacco-shop  that  one  day  I  shall  have." 

For  two  or  three  days  Rodrigo  guarded  the  pension 
against  the  conjuror  and  his  spies.  By  this  time  between 
Concetta's  apprehensions  and  Mrs.  Gainsborough's  exag- 
geration of  them,  Zozo  had  acquired  a  demoniac  menace, 
lurking  in  the  background  of  enjoyment  like  a  child's  fear. 

The  train  for  Algeciras  would  leave  in  the  morning  at 
four  o'clock.  It  was  advisable,  Rodrigo  thought,  to  be  at 
the  railway  station  by  two  o'clock  at  the  latest;  he  should 
come  with  a  carriage  to  meet  them.  Would  the  Senorita 
excuse  him  this  evening,  because  his  mother — he  gave  one 
of  his  inimitable  shrugs  to  express  the  need  of  sometimes 
yielding  to  maternal  fondness — wished  him  to  spend  his 
last  evening  with  her. 

At  two  o'clock  next  morning  Rodrigo  had  not  arrived, 
but  at  three  a  carriage  drove  up  and  the  coachman  handed 
Sylvia  a  note.  It  was  in  Spanish  to  say  that  Rodrigo  had 
met  with  an  accident  and  that  he  was  very  ill.  He  kissed 
the  Senorita's  hand.  He  believed  that  he  was  going  to  die, 
which  was  his  only  consolation  for  not  being  able  to  go  with 
her  to  Gibraltar;  it  was  el  destino;  he  had  brought  the 
accident  on  himself. 


322  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Sylvia  drove  with  Mrs.  Gainsborough  and  Concetta  to 
the  railway  station.  When  she  arrived  and  found  that  the 
train  would  not  leave  till  five,  she  kept  the  coachman  and, 
after  seeing  her  companions  safely  into  their  compartment, 
drove  to  where  Rodrigo  lived. 

He  was  lying  in  a  hovel  in  the  poorest  part  of  the  city. 
His  mother,  a  ragged  old  woman,  was  lamenting  in  a  cor- 
ner; one  or  two  neighbors  were  trying  to  quiet  her.  On 
Sylvia's  arrival  they  all  broke  out  in  a  loud  wail  of  apology 
for  the  misfortune  that  had  made  Rodrigo  break  his  engage- 
ment. Sylvia  paid  no  attention  to  them,  but  went  quickly 
across  to  the  bed  of  the  sick  boy.  He  opened  his  eyes  and 
with  an  effort  put  out  a  slim  brown  arm  and  caught  hold  of 
her  hand  to  kiss  it.  She  leaned  over  and  kissed  his  pale 
lips.  In  a  very  faint  voice,  hiding  his  head  in  the  pillow 
for  shame,  he  explained  that  he  had  brought  the  accident 
on  himself  by  his  boasting.  He  had  boasted  so  much 
about  the  tobacco-shop  and  the  favor  of  the  Senorita  that 
an  older  boy,  another  guide,  a — he  tried  to  shrug  his 
shoulders  in  contemptuous  expression  of  this  older  boy's 
inferior  quality,  but  his  body  contracted  in  a  spasm  of  pain 
and  he  had  to  set  criticism  on  one  side.  This  older  boy 
had  hit  him  out  of  jealousy,  and,  alas!  Rodrigo  had  lost 
his  temper  and  drawn  a  knife,  but  the  other  boy  had 
stabbed  first.  It  was  el  destino  most  unhappily  precipi- 
tated by  his  own  vainglory. 

Sylvia  turned  to  the  women  to  ask  what  could  be  done. 
Their  weeping  redoubled.  The  doctor  had  declared  it  was 
only  a  matter  of  hours;  the  priest  had  given  unction. 
Suddenly  Rodrigo  with  a  violent  effort  clutched  at  Sylvia's 
hand: 

"Senorita,  the  train!" 

He  fell  back  dead. 

Sylvia  left  money  for  the  funeral;  there  was  nothing 
more  to  be  done.  In  the  morning  twilight  she  went  down 
the  foul  stairs  and  back  to  the  carriage  that  seemed  now  to 
smell  of  death. 

When  she  arrived  at  the  station  a  great  commotion  was 
taking  place  on  the  platform,  and  Mrs.  Gainsborough  ap- 
peared, surrounded  by  a  gesticulating  crowd  of  porters, 
officials,  and  passengers. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  323 

"Sylvia!  Well,  I'm  glad  you've  got  here  at  last.  She's 
gone.  He's  whisked  her  away.  And  can  I  explain  what  I 
want  to  these  Spanish  idiots?  No.  I've  shouted  as  hard 
as  I  could,  and  they  won't  understand.  They  won't  under- 
stand me.  They  don't  want  to  understand,  that's  my 
opinion." 

With  which  Mrs.  Gainsborough  sailed  off  again  along 
the  platform,  followed  by  the  crowd,  which,  in  addition  to 
arguing  with  her  occasionally,  detached  from  itself  small 
groups  to  argue  furiously  with  one  another  about  her 
incomprehensible  desire.  Sylvia  extricated  their  luggage 
from  the  compartment,  for  the  train  to  go  to  Algeciras 
without  them;  then  she  extricated  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
from  the  general  noise  and  confusion  that  was  now  being 
added  to  by  loud  whistles  from  the  impatient  train. 

"I  was  sitting  in  one  corner  and  Concertina  was  sitting 
in  the  other,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  explained  to  Sylvia. 
"I'd  just  bobbed  down  to  pick  up  me  glasses  when  I  saw 
that  Shoushou  beckoning  to  her,  though  for  the  moment  I 
thought  it  was  the  porter.  Concertina  went  as  white  as 
paper.  'Here,'  I  hollered,  'what  are  you  doing?'  and  with 
that  I  got  up  from  me  place  and  tripped  over  your  luggage 
and  came  down  bump  on  the  foot-warmer.  When  I  got 
up  she  was  gone.  Depend  upon  it,  he'd  been  watching 
out  for  her  at  the  station.  As  soon  as  I  could  get  out  of  the 
carriage  I  started  hollering,  and  every  one  in  the  station 
came  running  round  to  see  what  was  the  matter.  I  tried 
to  tell  them  about  Shoushou,  and  they  pretended — for 
don't  you  tell  me  I  can't  make  myself  understood  if  people 
want  to  understand — they  pretended  they  thought  I  was 
asking  whether  I  was  in  the  right  train.  When  I  hollered 
'Shoushou,'  they  all  started  to  holler  'Shoushou'  as  well 
and  nod  their  heads  and  point  to  the  train.  I  got  that 
aggravated,  I  could  have  killed  them.  And  then  what  do 
you  think  they  did  ?  Insulting  I  call  it.  Why,  they  all 
began  to  laugh  and  beckon  to  me,  and  I,  thinking  that  at 
last  they'd  found  out  me  meaning,  went  and  followed  them 
like  a  silly  juggins,  and  where  do  you  think  they  took  me? 
To  the  moojeries!  what  we  call  the  ladies'  cloak-room. 
Well,  that  did  make  me  annoyed,  and  I  started  in  to  tell 
them  what  I  thought  of  such  behavior.  'I  don't  want  the 


324  Sylvia    Scarlett 

moojeries,'  I  shouted.  Then  I  tried  to  explain  by  illus- 
trating my  meaning.  I  took  hold  of  some  young  fellow 
and  said  'Shoushou,'  and  then  I  caught  hold  of  a  hussy 
that  was  laughing,  intending  to  make  her  Concertina,  but 
the  silly  little  bitch — really  it's  enough  to  make  any  one  a 
bit  unrefined — she  thought  I  was  going  to  hit  her  and 
started  in  to  scream  the  station-roof  down.  After  that  you 
came  along,  but  of  course  it  was  too  late.'* 

Sylvia  was  very  much  upset  by  the  death  of  Rodrigo  and 
the  loss  of  Concetta,  but  she  could  not  help  laughing  over 
Mrs.  Gainsborough's  woes. 

"It's  all  very  well  for  you  to  sit  there  and  laugh,  you 
great  tomboy,  but  it's  your  own  fault.  If  you'd  have  let 
me  bring  Mr.  Linthicum,  this  wouldn't  have  happened. 
What  could  I  do?  I  felt  like  a  missionary  among  a  lot  of 
cannibals." 

In  the  end  Sylvia  was  glad  to  avail  herself  of  the 
widower's  help,  but  after  two  days  even  he  had  to  admit 
himself  beaten. 

"And  if  he  says  they  can't  be  found,"  said  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough, "depend  upon  it  they  can't  be  found — not  by 
anybody.  That  man's  as  persistent  as  a  beggar.  When  he 
came  up  to  me  this  morning  and  cleared  his  throat  and 
shook  his  head,  well,  then  I  knew  we  might  as  well  give  up 
hope." 

Sylvia  stayed  on  for  a  while  in  Granada  because  she  did 
not  like  to  admit  defeat,  but  the  sadness  of  Rodrigo' s  death 
and  the  disappointment  over  Concetta  had  spoiled  the 
place  for  her.  Here  was  another  of  these  incomplete 
achievements  that  made  life  so  bitter.  She  had  thought 
for  a  brief  space  that  the  solitary  and  frightened  child 
would  provide  the  aim  that  she  had  so  ardently  desired. 
Concetta  had  responded  so  sweetly  to  her  protection,  had 
chattered  with  such  delight  of  going  to  England  and  of 
becoming  English;  now  she  had  been  dragged  back. 
El  destino!  Rodrigo' s  death  did  not  affect  her  so  much  as 
the  loss  of  that  fair,  slim  child.  His  short  life  had  been 
complete;  he  was  spared  forever  from  disillusionment,  and 
by  existing  in  her  memory  eternally  young  and  joyous  and 
wise  he  had  spared  his  Senorita  also  the  pain  of  disillusion- 
ment, just  as  when  he  was  alive  he  had  always  assumed  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  325 

little  bothers  upon  his  shoulders,  the  little  bothers  of 
every-day  existence.  His  was  a  perfect  episode,  but 
Concetta  disturbed  her  with  vain  regrets  and  speculations. 
Yet  in  a  way  Concetta  had  helped  her,  for  she  knew 
now  that  she  held  in  her  heart  an  inviolate  treasure  of 
love.  Never  again  could  anything  happen  like  those  three 
months  after  she  left  Philip;  never  again  could  she  treat 
any  one  with  the  scorn  she  had  treated  Michael;  never 
again  could  she  take  such  a  cynical  attitude  toward  any 
one  as  that  she  had  taken  toward  Lily.  All  these  dis- 
appointments added  a  little  gold  tried  by  fire  to  the  treas- 
ure in  her  heart,  and  firmly  she  must  believe  that  it  was 
being  stored  to  some  purpose  soon  to  be  showered  prodi- 
gally, ah,  how  prodigally,  upon  somebody. 

That  evening  Sylvia  had  made  up  her  mind  to  return  to 
England  at  once,  but  after  she  had  gone  to  bed  she  was 
awakened  by  Mrs.  Gainsborough's  coming  into  her  room 
and  in  a  choked  voice  asking  for  help.  When  the  light 
was  turned  on,  Sylvia  saw  that  she  was  enmeshed  in  a 
mosquito-net  and  looking  in  her  nightgown  like  a  large 
turbot. 

"I  knew  it  would  happen,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  panted. 
"Every  night  I've  said  to  myself,  'It's  bound  to  happen,' 
and  it  has.  I  was  dreaming  how  that  Shoushou  was  chas- 
ing me  with  a  butterfly-net,  and  look  at  me!  Don't  tell  me 
dreams  don't  sometimes  come  true.  Now  don't  stand 
there  in  fits  of  laughter.  I  can't  get  out  of  it,  you  unfeeling 
thing.  I've  swallowed  about  a  pint  of  Keating's.  I  hope 
I  sha'n't  come  out  in  spots.  Come  and  help  me  out.  I 
daren't  move  a  finger,  or  I  shall  start  off  sneezing  again. 
And  every  time  I  sneeze  I  get  deeper  in.  It's  something 
chronic." 

"  Didn't  Linthicum  ever  inform  you  how  to  get  out  of  a 
mosquito-net  that  collapses  in  the  middle  of  the  night?" 
Sylvia  asked,  when  she  had  extricated  the  old  lady. 

"No,  the  conversation  never  happened  to  take  a  turn 
that  way.  But  depend  upon  it,  I  shall  ask  him  to-morrow. 
I  won't  be  caught  twice." 

Sylvia  suddenly  felt  that  it  would  be  impossible  to 
return  to  England  yet. 

"We  must  go  on,"  she  told  Mrs.  Gainsborough.    "You 


326  Sylvia    Scarlett 

must  have  more  opportunities  for  practising  what  Linthi- 
cum  has  been  preaching  to  you." 

"What  you'd  like  is  for  me  to  make  a  poppy-show  of 
myself  all  over  the  world  and  drag  me  round  the  Continent 
like  a  performing  bear." 

"We'll  go  to  Morocco,"  Sylvia  cried. 

" Don't  shout  like  that.  You'll  set  me  off  on  the  sneeze 
again.  You're  here,  there,  and  everywhere  like  a  demon 
king,  I  do  declare.  Morocco?  That's  where  the  leather 
comes  from,  isn't  it?  Do  they  have  mosquito-nets  there 
too?" 

Sylvia  nodded. 

"Well,  the  first  thing  I  shall  do  to-morrow  is  to  ask 
Mr.  Linthicum  what's  the  best  way  of  fastening  up  a 
mosquito-net  in  Morocco.  And  now  I  suppose  I  shall 
wake  up  in  the  morning  with  a  nose  like  a  tomato.  Ah, 
well,  such  is  life." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  went  back  to  bed,  and  Sylvia  lay 
awake  thinking  of  Morocco. 

Mr.  Linthicum  came  to  see  them  off  on  their  second 
attempt  to  leave  Granada.  He  cleared  his  throat  rather 
more  loudly  than  usual  to  compete  with  the  noise  of  the 
railway,  invited  them  to  look  him  up  if  they  ever  came  to 
Schenectady,  pressed  a  book  called  Five  Hundred  Facts  for 
the  Waistcoat  Pocket  into  Mrs.  Gainsborough's  hands,  and 
waved  them  out  of  sight  with  a  large  bandana  handker- 
chief. 

"Well,  I  shall  miss  that  man,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough, 
settling  down  to  the  journey.  "He  must  have  been  a 
regular  education  for  his  customers,  and  I  shall  never 
forget  his  recipe  for  avoiding  bunions  when  mountain- 
eering." 

"How's  that  done?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  remember  the  details.  I  didn't  pay  any 
attention  to  them,  because  it's  not  to  be  supposed  that 
I'm  going  to  career  up  Mont  Blong  at  my  time  of  life. 
No,  I  was  making  a  reference  to  the  tone  of  his  voice. 
They  may  be  descended  from  Indians,  but  I  dare  say 
Adam  wasn't  much  better  than  a  red  Indian,  if  it  comes 
to  that." 

They  traveled  to  Cadiz  for  the  boat  to  Tangier.    Mrs. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  327 

Gainsborough  got  very  worried  on  the  long  spit  of  land 
over  which  the  train  passed,  and  insisted  on  piling  up  all 
the  luggage  at  one  end  of  the  compartment  in  case  they  fell 
into  the  sea,  though  she  was  unable  to  explain  her  motive 
for  doing  this.  The  result  was  that,  when  they  stopped  at 
a  station  before  Cadiz  and  the  door  of  the  compartment 
was  opened  suddenly,  all  the  luggage  fell  out  on  top  of 
three  priests  that  were  preparing  to  climb  in,  one  of  whom 
was  knocked  flat.  Apart  from  the  argument  that  ensued 
the  journey  was  uneventful. 

The  boat  from  Tangier  left  in  the  dark.  At  dawn  Cadiz 
glimmered  like  a  rosy  pearl  upon  the  horizon. 

"We're  in  Trafalgar  Bay  now,"  said  Sylvia. 

But  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  who  was  feeling  the  effects  of 
getting  up  so  early,  said  she  wished  it  was  Trafalgar  Square 
and  begged  to  be  left  in  peace.  After  an  hour's  doze  in  the 
sunlight  she  roused  herself  slightly: 

"Where's  this  Trafalgar  Bay  you  were  making  such  a 
fuss  about?" 

"We've  passed  it  now,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Oh,  well,  I  dare  say  it  wasn't  anything  to  look  it.  I'm 
bound  to  say  the  chocolate  we  had  this  morning  does  not 
seem  to  go  with  the  sea  air.  They're  arguing  the  point 
inside  me  something  dreadful.  I  suppose  this  boat  is  safe? 
It  seems  to  be  jigging  a  good  deal.  Mr.  Linthicum  said  it 
was  a  good  plan  to  put  the  head  between  the  knees  when 
you  felt  a  bit — well,  I  wouldn't  say  seasick — but  you 
know  .  .  .  I'm  bound  to  say  I  think  he  was  wrong  for 
once.  I  feel  more  like  putting  my  knees  up  over  my  head. 
Can't  you  speak  to  the  captain  and  tell  him  to  go  a  bit 
more  quietly?  It's  no  good  racing  along  like  he's  doing. 
Of  course  the  boat  jigs.  I  shall  get  aggravated  in  two 
twos.  It's  to  be  hoped  Morocco  will  be  worth  it.  I  never 
got  up  so  early  to  go  anywhere.  Was  that  sailor  laughing 
at  me  when  he  walked  past  ?  It's  no  good  my  getting  up  to 
tell  him  what  I  think  of  him,  because  every  time  I  try  to 
get  up  the  boat  gets  up  with  me.  It  keeps  butting  into  me 
behind  like  a  great  billy-goat." 

Presently  Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  unable  even  to  pro- 
test against  the  motion,  and  could  only  murmur  faintly  to 
Sylvia  a  request  to  remove  her  veil. 


328  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Here  we  are,"  cried  Sylvia,  three  or  four  hours  later. 
"And  it's  glorious!" 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  sat  up  and  looked  at  the  rowboats 
filled  with  Moors,  negroes,  and  Jews. 

"But  they're  nearly  all  of  them  black,"  she  gasped. 

"Of  course  they  are.  What  color  did  you  expect  them 
to  be?  Green  like  yourself?" 

"But  do  you  mean  to  say  you've  brought  me  to  a  place 
inhabited  by  blacks?  Well,  I  never  did.  It's  to  be  hoped 
we  sha'n't  be  eaten  alive.  Mrs.  Marsham!  Mrs.  Ewings! 
Mrs.  Beardmore!  Well,  I  don't  say  they  haven't  told  me 
some  good  stories  now  and  again,  but — 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  shook  her  head  to  express  the  depths 
of  insignificance  to  which  henceforth  the  best  stories  of  her 
friends  would  have  to  sink  when  she  should  tell  about  her- 
self in  Morocco. 

"AH  Baba  and  the  Forty  Thieves,"  said  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough, when  they  stood  upon  the  quay.  "I  feel  like  the 
widow  Twankay  myself." 

Sylvia  remembered  her  ambition  to  visit  the  East,  when 
she  herself  wore  a  yashmak  in  Open  Sesame:  here  it  was 
fulfilling  perfectly  her  most  daring  hopes. 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  relieved  to  find  a  comparatively 
European  hotel,  and  next  morning  after  a  long  sleep  she 
was  ready  for  any  adventure. 

"Sylvia!"  she  suddenly  screamed  when  they  were  being 
jostled  in  the  crowded  bazaar.  "Look,  there's  a  camel 
coming  toward  us!  Did  you  ever  hear  such  a  hollering 
and  jabbering  in  all  your  life?  I'm  sure  I  never  did.  Mrs. 
Marsham  and  her  camel  at  the  Zoo.  Tut-tut-tut!  Do 
you  suppose  Mrs.  Marsham  ever  saw  a  camel  coming 
toward  her  in  the  street  like  a  cab-horse  might  ?  Certainly 
not.  Why,  after  this  there's  nothing  in  her  story.  It's  a 
mere  anecdote." 

They  wandered  up  to  the  outskirts  of  the  prison,  and 
saw  a  fat  Jewess  being  pushed  along  under  arrest  for 
giving  false  weight.  She  made  some  resistance  in  the 
narrow  entrance,  and  the  guard  planted  his  foot  in  the 
small  of  her  back,  so  that  she  seemed  suddenly  to  crumple 
up  and  fall  inside. 

"Well,  I've  often  said  lightly  'what  a  heathen*  or  'there's 


Sylvia    Scarlett  329 

a  young  heathen,'  but  that  brings  it  home  to  one,"  said 
Mrs.  Gainsborough,  gravely. 

Sylvia  paid  no  attention  to  her  companion's  outraged 
sympathy.  She  was  in  the  East  where  elderly  obese 
Jewesses  who  gave  false  weight  were  well  treated  thus. 
She  was  living  with  every  moment  of  rapturous  reality  the 
dreams  of  wonder  that  the  Arabian  Nights  had  brought  her 
in  youth.  Yet  Tangier  was  only  a  gateway  to  enchant- 
ments a  hundredfold  more  powerful.  She  turned  suddenly 
to  Mrs.  Gainsborough  and  asked  her  if  she  could  stay  here 
while  she  rode  into  the  interior. 

"Stay  here  alone?"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  exclaimed. 
"Not  if  I  know  it." 

This  plan  of  Sylvia's  to  explore  the  interior  of  Morocco 
was  narrowed  down  ultimately  into  riding  to  Tetuan, 
which  was  apparently  just  feasible  for  Mrs.  Gainsborough, 
though  likely  to  be  rather  fatiguing. 

A  dragoman  was  found,  a  certain  Don  Alfonso  reported 
to  be  comparatively  honest.  He  was  an  undersized  man 
rather  like  the  stump  of  a  tallow  candle  into  which  the 
wick  has  been  pressed  down  by  the  snuffer,  for  he  was  bald 
and  cream-colored,  with  a  thin,  uneven  black  mustache 
and  two  nodules  on  his  forehead.  His  clothes,  too,  were 
crinkled  like  a  candlestick.  He  spoke  French  well,  but 
preferred  to  speak  English,  of  which  he  only  knew  two 
words,  "all  right";  this  often  made  his  advice  unduly 
optimistic.  In  addition  to  Don  Alfonso  they  were  accom- 
panied by  a  Moorish  trooper  and  a  native  called  Moham- 
med. 

"A  soldier,  is  he?"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  regarding 
the  grave  bearded  man  to  whose  care  they  were  intrusted. 
"He  looks  more  like  the  outside  of  an  ironmonger's  shop. 
Swords,  pistols,  guns,  spears.  It's  to  be  hoped  he  won't 
get  aggravated  with  us  on  the  way.  I  should  look  very 
funny  lying  in  the  road  with  a  pistol  through  my  heart." 

They  rode  out  of  Tangier  before  a  single  star  had  paled 
in  the  east,  and  when  dawn  broke  they  were  in  a  wide 
valley  fertile  and  bright  with  flowers;  green  hills  rose  to 
right  and  left  of  them  and  faded  far  away  into  blue  moun- 
tains. 

"I  wish  you'd  tell  that  Mahomet  not  to  irritate  my  poor 


330  Sylvia    Scarlett 

mule  by  egging  it  on  all  the  time,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough  said 
to  Don  Alfonso,  who,  realizing  by  her  gestures  that  she 
wanted  something  done  to  her  mount,  and  supposing  by  her 
smile  that  the  elation  of  adventure  had  seized  her,  replied 
"All  right,5*  and  said  something  in  Moorish  to  Moham- 
med. He  at  once  caught  the  mule  a  terrific  whack  on  the 
crupper,  causing  the  animal  to  leap  forward  and  leave 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  and  the  saddle  in  the  path  . 

"Now  there's  a  nice  game  to  play!"  said  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough, indignantly.  "  'All  right,'  he  says,  and  'boomph' ! 
What's  he  think  I'm  made  of?  Well,  of  course  here  we 
shall  have  to  sit  now  until  some  one  comes  along  with  a 
step-ladder.  If  you'd  have  let  me  ride  on  a  camel,"  she 
added,  reproachfully,  to  Sylvia,  "this  wouldn't  have 
occurred.  I'm  not  sitting  on  myself  any  more;  I'm  sitting 
on  bumps  like  eggs.  I  feel  like  a  hen.  It's  all  very  fine  for 
Mr.  Alfonso  to  go  on  gabbling,  'All  right,'  but  it's  all 
wrong,  and  if  you'll  have  the  goodness  to  tell  him  so  in  his 
own  unnatural  language  I'll  be  highly  obliged." 

The  Moorish  soldier  sat  regarding  the  scene  from  his 
horse  with  immutable  gravity. 

"I  reckon  he'd  like  nothing  better  than  to  get  a  good 
jab  at  me  now,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "Yes,  I  dare 
say  I  look  very  inviting  sitting  here  on  the  ground.  Well, 
it's  to  be  hoped  they'll  have  the  'Forty  Thieves'  or 
'Aladdin'  for  the  next  pantomime  at  Drury  Lane.  I  shall 
certainly  invite  Mrs.  Marsham  and  Mrs.  Beardmore  to 
come  with  me  into  the  upper  boxes  so  as  I  can  explain 
what  it's  all  about.  Mrs.  Ewings  doesn't  like  panto,  or 
I'd  have  taken  her  too.  She  likes  a  good  cry  when  she 
goes  to  the  theater." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  settling  down  to  spend  the  rest 
of  the  morning  in  amiable  reminiscence  and  planning,  but 
she  was  at  last  persuaded  to  get  up  and  mount  her  mule 
again  after  the  strictest  assurances  had  been  given  to 
her  of  Mohammed's  good  behavior  for  the  rest  of  the 
journey. 

"He's  not  to  bellow  in  the  poor  animal's  ear,"  she  stipu- 
lated. 

Sylvia  promised. 

"And  he's  not  to  go  screeching,  'Arrassy,'  or  whatever  it 


Sylvia    Scarlett  331 

is,  behind,  so  as  the  poor  animal  thinks  it's  a  lion  galloping 
after  him." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  transferring  all  consideration 
for  herself  to  the  mule. 

"And  he's  to  throw  away  that  stick." 

This  clause  was  only  accepted  by  the  other  side  with  a 
good  deal  of  protestation. 

"And  he's  to  keep  his  hands  and  feet  to  himself,  and  not 
to  throw  stones  or  nothing  at  the  poor  beast,  who's  got 
quite  enough  to  do  to  carry  me." 

"And  Ali  Baba's  to  ride  in  front."  She  indicated  the 
trooper.  "It  gets  me  on  the  blink  when  he's  behind  me, 
as  if  I  was  in  a  shooting-gallery.  If  he's  going  to  be  any 
use  to  us,  which  I  doubt,  he'll  be  more  useful  in  front  than 
hiding  behind  me." 

"All  right,"  said  Don  Alfonso,  who  was  anxious  to  get 
on,  because  they  had  a  long  way  to  go. 

"And  that's  enough  of  'all  right'  from  him,"  said  Mrs. 
Gainsborough.  "I  don't  want  to  hear  any  more  'all 
rights."' 

At  midday  they  reached  a  khan,  where  they  ate  lunch 
and  rested  for  two  hours  in  the  shade. 

Soon  after  they  had  started  again,  they  met  a  small 
caravan  with  veiled  women  and  mules  loaded  with  oranges. 

"Quite  pleasant-looking  people,"  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
beamed.  "I  should  have  waved  my  hand  if  I  could  have 
been  sure  of  not  falling  off  again.  Funny  trick,  wearing 
that  stuff  round  their  faces.  I  suppose  they're  ashamed  of 
being  so  black." 

Mrs.  Gainsborough's  progress,  which  grew  more  and 
more  leisurely  as  the  afternoon  advanced,  became  a  source 
of  real  anxiety  to  Don  Alfonso;  he  confided  to  Sylvia  that 
he  was  afraid  the  gates  of  Tetuan  would  be  shut.  When 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  was  told  of  his  alarm  she  was  ex- 
tremely scornful. 

"He's  having  you  on,  Sylvia,  so  as  to  give  Mohamet 
the  chance  of  sloshing  my  poor  mule  again.  Whoever 
heard  of  a  town  having  gates  ?  He'll  tell  us  next  that  we've 
got  to  pay  sixpence  at  the  turnstile  to  pass  in." 

They  came  to  a  high  place  where  a  white  stone  by  the 
path  recorded  a  battle  between  Spaniards  and  Moors. 


332  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Far  below  were  the  domes  and  rose-dyed  minarets  of 
Tetuan  and  a  shining  river  winding  to  the  sea.  They 
heard  the  sound  of  a  distant  gun. 

"Sunset,"  cried  Don  Alfonso,  much  perturbed.  "In 
half  an  hour  the  gates  will  be  shut." 

He  told  tales  of  brigands  and  of  Riffs,  of  travelers  found 
with  their  throats  cut  outside  the  city  walls,  and  suddenly, 
as  if  to  give  point  to  his  fears,  a  figure  leaning  on  a  long 
musket  appeared  in  silhouette  upon  the  edge  of  the  hill 
above  them.  It  really  seemed  advisable  to  hurry,  and, 
notwithstanding  Mrs.  Gainsborough's  expostulations,  the 
speed  of  the  party  was  doubled  down  a  rocky  descent  to  a 
dried-up  watercourse  with  high  banks.  Twilight  came  on 
rapidly  and  the  soldier  prepared  one  of  his  numerous 
weapons  for  immediate  use  in  an  emergency.  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough was  much  too  nervous  about  falling  off  to  bother 
about  brigands,  and  at  last  without  any  mishap  they 
reached  the  great  castellated  gate  of  Tetuan.  It  was  shut. 

"Well,  I  never  saw  the  like,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough. 
"It's  true,  then.  We  must  ring  the  bell,  that's  all." 

The  soldier,  Mohammed,  and  Don  Alfonso  raised  their 
voices  in  a  loud  hail,  but  nobody  paid  any  attention,  and 
the  twilight  deepened.  Mrs.  Gainsborough  alighted  from 
her  mule  and  thumped  at  the  iron-studded  door.  Silence 
answered  her. 

"Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  seriously  that  they're  going  to 
keep  us  outside  here  all  night?  Why,  it's  laughable!" 
Suddenly  she  lifted  her  voice  and  cried,  "Milk-ho!" 
Whether  the  unusual  sound  aroused  the  curiosity  or  the 
alarm  of  the  porter  within  was  uncertain,  but  he  leaned 
his  head  out  of  a  small  window  above  the  gate  and  shouted 
something  at  the  belated  party  below.  Immediately  the 
dispute  for  which  Mohammed  and  Don  Alfonso  had  been 
waiting  like  terriers  on  a  leash  was  begun;  it  lasted  for  ten 
minutes  without  any  of  the  three  participants  drawing 
breath. 

In  the  end  Don  Alfonso  announced  that  the  porter  de- 
clined to  open  for  less  than  two  francs,  although  he  had 
offered  him  as  much  as  one  franc  fifty.  With  a  determina- 
tion not  to  be  beaten  that  was  renewed  by  the  pause  for 
breath,  Don  Alfonso  flung  himself  into  the  argument 


Sylvia    Scarlett  333 

again,  splendidly  assisted  by  Mohammed,  who  seemed  to 
be  tearing  out  his  hair  in  baffled  fury. 

"I  wish  I  knew  what  they  were  calling  each  other,"  said 
Sylvia. 

"Something  highly  insulting,  I  should  think,"  Mrs. 
Gainsborough  answered.  "Wonderful  the  way  they  use 
their  hands.  He  doesn't  seem  to  be  worrying  himself  so 
very  much.  I  suppose  he'll  start  in  shooting  in  the  end." 

She  pointed  to  the  soldier,  who  was  regarding  the  dis- 
pute with  contemptuous  gravity.  Another  window  in  a 
tower  on  the  other  side  of  the  gate  was  opened,  and  the 
first  porter  was  reinforced.  Perspiration  was  dripping 
from  Don  Alfonso's  forehead;  he  looked  more  like  a  candle 
stump  than  ever,  when  presently  he  stood  aside  from  the 
argument  to  say  that  he  had  been  forced  to  offer  one  franc 
seventv-five  to  enter  Tetuan. 

"Tetuan,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "Tetuarn't,  I 
should  say." 

Sylvia  asked  Don  Alfonso  what  he  was  calling  the 
porter,  and  it  appeared,  though  he  minimized  the  insult  by 
a  gesture,  that  he  had  just  invited  forty-three  dogs  to 
devour  the  corpse  of  the  porter's  grandmother.  This, 
however,  he  hastened  to  add,  had  not  annoyed  him  so 
much  as  his  withdrawal  from  one  franc  fifty  to  one  franc 
twenty-five. 

In  the  end  the  porter  agreed  to  open  the  gate  for  one 
franc  seventy-five. 

"Which  is  just  as  well,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  "for 
I'm  sure  Mohamet  would  have  thrown  a  fit  soon.  He's 
got  to  banging  his  forehead  with  his  fists,  and  that's  a 
very  bad  sign." 

They  rode  through  the  darkness  between  double  walls, 
disturbing  every  now  and  then  a  beggar  who  whined  for 
alms  or  cursed  them  if  the  mule  trod  upon  his  outspread 
legs.  They  found  an  inn  called  the  Hotel  Splendide,  a  bug- 
ridden  tumble-down  place  kept  by  Spanish  Jews  as  vora- 
cious as  the  bugs.  Yet  out  on  the  roof,  looking  at  the 
domes  and  minarets  glimmering  under  Venus  setting  in  the 
west  from  a  sky  full  of  stars,  listening  to  the  howling  of 
distant  dogs,  breathing  the  perfume  of  the  East,  Sylvia 
felt  like  a  conqueror. 


334  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Next  morning  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  finding  that  the  bugs 
had  retreated  with  the  light,  decided  to  spend  the  morning 
in  sleeping  off  some  of  her  bruises.  Sylvia  wandered 
through  the  bazaars  with  Don  Alfonso,  and  sat  for  a  while 
in  the  garden  of  a  French  convent,  where  a  fountain  whis- 
pered in  the  shade  of  pomegranates.  Suddenly,  walking 
along  the  path  toward  her  she  saw  Maurice  Avery. 

Sylvia  had  disliked  Avery  very  much  when  she  met  him 
in  London  nearly  two  years  ago;  but  the  worst  enemy,  the 
most  flagitious  bore,  is  transformed  when  encountered 
alone  in  a  distant  country,  and  now  Sylvia  felt  well  dis- 
posed toward  him  and  eager  to  share  with  any  one  who 
could  appreciate  her  pleasure  the  marvel  of  being  in 
Tetuan.  He  too,  by  the  way  his  face  lighted  up,  was  glad 
to  see  her,  and  they  shook  hands  with  a  cordiality  that  was 
quite  out  of  proportion  to  their  earlier  acquaintance. 

"I  say,  what  a  queer  place  to  meet!"  he  exclaimed. 
"Are  you  alone,  then?" 

"I've  got  Mrs.  Gainsborough  with  me,  that's  all.  I'm 
not  married  ...  or  anything." 

It  was  absurd  how  eager  she  felt  to  assure  Avery  of  this; 
and  then  in  a  moment  the  topic  had  been  started. 

"No,  have  you  really  got  Mrs.  Gainsborough?"  he 
exclaimed.  "Of  course  I've  heard  about  her  from  Michael. 
Poor  old  Michael!" 

"Why,  what's  the  matter?"  Sylvia  asked,  sharply. 

"Oh,  he's  perfectly  all  right,  but  he's  lost  to  his  friends. 
At  least  I  suppose  he  is — buried  in  a  monastery.  He's  not 
actually  a  monk.  I  believe  he's  what's  called  an  oblate, 
pursuing  the  Fata  Morgana  of  faith — a  sort  of  dream  .  .  ." 

"Yes,  yes,"  Sylvia  interrupted.  "I  understand  the 
allusion.  You  needn't  talk  down  to  me." 

Avery  blushed.  The  color  in  his  cheeks  made  him  seem 
very  young. 

"Sorry.  I  was  thinking  of  somebody  else  for  the 
moment.  That  sounds  very  discourteous  also.  I  must 
apologize  again.  What's  happened  to  Lily  Haden?" 

Sylvia  told  him  briefly  the  circumstances  of  Lily's  mar- 
riage at  Rio.  "Does  Michael  ever  talk  about  her?"  she 
asked. 

"Oh  no,  never!"  said  Avery.    "He's  engaged  in  saving 


Sylvia    Scarlett  335 

his  own  soul  now.  That  sounds  malicious,  but  seriously 
I  don't  think  she  was  ever  more  to  him  than  an  intellectual 
landmark.  To  understand  Michael's  point  of  view  in  all 
that  business  you've  got  to  know  that  he  was  illegitimate. 
His  father,  Lord  Saxby,  had  a  romantic  passion  for  the 
daughter  of  a  country  parson — a  queer,  cross-grained  old 
scholar.  You  remember  Arthur  Lonsdale?  Well,  his 
father,  Lord  Cleveden,  knew  the  whole  history  of  the 
affair.  Lady  Saxby  wouldn't  divorce  him;  so  they  were 
never  married.  I  suppose  Michael  brooded  over  this  and 
magnified  his  early  devotion  to  Lily  in  some  way  or  other 
up  to  a  vow  of  reparation.  I'm  quite  sure  it  was  a  kind  of 
indirect  compliment  to  his  own  mother.  Of  course  it  was 
all  very  youthful  and  foolish — and  yet  I  don't  know  .  .  ." 
he  broke  off  with  a  sigh. 

"You  think  one  can't  afford  to  bury  the  past?'* 

Avery  looked  at  her  quickly.  "What  made  you  ask 
me  that?" 

"I  thought  vou  seemed  to  admire  Michael's  youthful 
foolishness." 

"I  do  really.  I  admire  any  one  that's  steadfast  even  to 
a  mistaken  idea.  It's  strange  to  meet  an  Englishwoman 
here,"  he  said,  looking  intently  at  Sylvia.  "One's  guard 
drops.  I'm  longing  to  make  a  confidante  of  you,  but  you 
might  be  bored.  I'm  rather  frightened  of  you,  really. 
I  always  was." 

"I  sha'n't  exchange  confidences,"  Sylvia  said,  "if  that's 
what  you're  afraid  of." 

"No,  of  course  not,"  Avery  said,  quickly.  "Last  spring 
I  was  in  love  with  a  girl  .  .  ." 

Sylvia  raised  her  eyebrows. 

"Oh  yes,  it's  a  very  commonplace  beginning  and  rather 
a  commonplace  end,  I'm  afraid.  She  was  a  ballet-girl — 
the  incarnation  of  May  and  London.  That  sounds  exag- 
gerated, for  I  know  that  lots  of  other  Jenny  Pearls  have 
been  the  same  to  somebody,  but  I  do  believe  most  people 
agreed  with  me.  I  wanted  her  to  live  with  me.  She 
wouldn't.  She  had  sentimental,  or  what  I  thought  were 
sentimental,  ideas  about  her  mother  and  family.  I  was 
called  away  to  Spain.  When  my  business  was  finished  I 
begged  her  to  come  out  to  me  there.  That  was  last  April. 
22 


336  Sylvia    Scarlett 

She  refused,  and  I  was  piqued,  I  suppose,  at  first,  and  did 
not  go  back  to  England.  Then,  as  one  does,  I  made  up  my 
mind  to  the  easiest  thing  at  the  moment  by  letting  myself 
be  enchanted  by  my  surroundings  into  thinking  that  I  was 
happier  as  it  was.  For  a  while  I  was  happier;  in  a  way  our 
love  had  been  a  great  strain  upon  us  both.  I  came  to 
Morocco,  and  gradually  ever  since  I've  been  realizing  that 
I  left  something  unfinished.  It's  become  a  kind  of  obses- 
sion. Do  you  know  what  I  mean?" 

"Indeed  I  do,  very  well  indeed,"  Sylvia  said. 

" Thanks,"  he  said  with  a  grateful  look.  "Now  comes 
the  problem.  If  I  go  back  to  England  this  month,  if  I 
arrive  in  England  on  the  first  of  May  exactly  a  year  later, 
there's  only  one  thing  I  can  do  to  atone  for  my  behavior — 
I  must  ask  her  to  marry  me.  You  see  that,  don't  you? 
This  little  thing  is  proud,  oh,  but  tremendously  proud.  I 
doubt  very  much  if  she'll  forgive  me,  even  if  I  show  the 
sincerity  of  my  regret  by  asking  her  to  marry  me  now;  but 
it's  my  only  chance.  And  yet — oh,  I  expect  this  will  sound 
damnable  to  you,  but  it's  the  way  we've  all  been  molded 
in  England — she's  common.  Common!  What  an  out- 
rageous word  to  use.  But  then  it  is  used  by  everybody. 
She's  the  most  frankly  cockney  thing  you  ever  saw.  Can  I 
stand  her  being  snubbed  and  patronized?  Can  I  stand  my 
wife's  being  snubbed  and  patronized?  Can  love  survive 
the  sort  of  ambushed  criticism  that  I  shall  perceive  all 
round  us?  For  I  wouldn't  try  to  change  her.  No,  no,  no! 
She  must  be  herself.  I'll  have  no  throaty  *aws*  mas- 
querading as  Vs.'  She  must  keep  her  own  clear  'aou's.' 
There  must  not  be  any  'naceness'  or  patched-up  shop- 
walker's English.  I  love  her  more  at  this  moment  than  I 
ever  loved  her,  but  can  I  stand  it?  And  I'm  not  asking 
this  egotistically:  I'm  asking  it  for  both  of  us.  That's 
why  you  meet  me  in  Tetuan,  for  I  dare  not  go  back  to 
England  lest  the  first  cockney  voice  I  hear  may  kill  my 
determination,  and  I  really  am  longing  to  marry  her.  Yet 
I  wait  here,  staking  what  I  know  in  my  heart  is  all  my 
future  happiness  on  chance,  assuring  myself  that  presently 
impulse  and  reason  will  be  reconciled  and  will  send  me 
back  to  her,  but  still  I  wait." 

He  paused.    The  fountain  whispered  in  the  shade  of  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  337 

pomegranates.  A  nun  was  gathering  flowers  for  the  chapel. 
Outside,  the  turmoil  of  the  East  sounded  like  the  distant 
chattering  of  innumerable  monkeys. 

"You've  so  nearly  reached  the  point  at  which  a  man 
has  the  right  to  approach  a  woman,"  Sylvia  said,  "that  if 
you're  asking  my  advice,  I  advise  you  to  wait  until  you  do 
actually  reach  that  point.  Of  course  you  may  lose  her  by 
waiting.  She  may  marry  somebody  else." 

"Oh,  I  know;  I've  thought  of  that.  In  a  way  that 
would  be  a  solution." 

"So  long  as  you  regard  her  marriage  with  somebody 
else  as  a  solution,  you're  still  some  way  from  the  point. 
It's  curious  she  should  be  a  ballet-girl,  because  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough, you  know,  was  a  ballet-girl.  In  1869,  when  she 
took  her  emotional  plunge,  she  was  able  to  exchange  the 
wings  of  Covent  Garden  for  the  wings  of  love  easily  enough. 
In  1869  ballet-girls  never  thought  of  marrying  what  were 
and  are  called  'gentlemen.'  I  think  Mrs.  Gainsborough 
would  consider  her  life  a  success;  she  was  not  too  much 
married  to  spoil  love,  and  the  captain  was  certainly  more 
devoted  to  her  than  most  husbands  would  have  been. 
The  proof  that  her  life  was  a  success  is  that  she  has  re- 
mained young.  Yet  if  I  introduce  you  to  her  you'll  see  at 
once  your  own  Jenny  at  sixty  like  her — that  won't  be  at 
all  a  hard  feat  of  imagination.  But  you'll  still  be  seeing 
yourself  at  twenty-five  or  whatever  you  are;  you'll  never 
be  able  to  see  yourself  at  sixty;  therefore  I  sha'n't  intro- 
duce you.  I'm  too  much  of  a  woman  not  to  hope  with  all 
my  heart  that  you'll  go  home  to  England,  marry  your 
Jenny,  and  live  happily  ever  afterward,  and  I  think  you'd 
better  not  meet  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  in  case  she  prejudices 
your  resolve.  Thanks  for  giving  me  your  confidence." 

"Oh  no!    Thank  you  for  listening,"  said  Avery. 

"I'm  glad  you're  not  going  to  develop  her.  I  once 
suffered  from  that  kind  of  vivisection  myself,  though  I 
never  had  a  cockney  accent.  Some  souls  can't  stand 
straight  lacing,  just  as  some  bodies  revolt  from  stays. 
And  so  Michael  is  in  a  monastery?  I  suppose  that  means 
all  his  soul  spasms  are  finally  allayed?" 

"  O  Lord !  No !"  said  Avery.  "  He's  in  the  very  middle 
of  them." 


338  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"What  I  really  meant  to  say  was  heart  palpitations." 

"I  don't  think,  really,"  said  Avery,  "that  Michael  ever 
had  them." 

" What  was  Lily,  then?" 

"Oh,  essentially  a  soul  spasm,"  he  declared. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  it  was,"  Sylvia  agreed,  pensively. 

"I  think,  you  know,  I  must  meet  Mrs.  Gainsborough," 
said  Avery.  "Fate  answers  for  you.  Here  she  comes." 

Don  Alfonso,  with  the  pain  that  every  dog  and  drago- 
man feels  in  the  separation  of  his  charges,  had  taken 
advantage  of  Sylvia's  talk  with  Avery  to  bring  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough triumphantly  back  to  the  fold. 

"Here  we  are  again,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  limping 
down  the  path.  "And  my  behind  looks  like  a  magic 
lantern.  Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon!  I  didn't  see  you'd  met  a 
friend.  So  that's  what  Alfonso  was  trying  to  tell  me.  He's 
been  going  like  an  alarm-clock  all  the  way  here.  Pleased 
to  meet  you,  I'm  sure.  How  do  you  like  Morocco?  We 
got  shut  out  last  night." 

"This  is  a  friend  of  Michael  Fane's,"  said  Sylvia. 

"Did  you  know  him?  He  was  a  nice  young  fellow. 
Very  nice  he  was.  But  he  wouldn't  know  me  now.  Very 
stay-at-home  I  was  when  he  used  to  come  to  Mulberry 
Cottage.  Why,  he  tried  to  make  me  ride  in  a  hansom 
once,  and  I  was  actually  too  nervous.  You  know,  I'd  got 
into  a  regular  rut.  But  now,  well,  upon  me  word,  I  don't 
believe  now  I  should  say  'no'  if  any  one  was  to  invite  me 
to  ride  inside  of  a  whale.  It's  her  doing,  the  tartar." 

Avery  had  learned  a  certain  amount  of  Arabic  during 
his  stay  in  Morocco  and  he  made  the  bazaars  of  Tetuan 
much  more  interesting  than  Don  Alfonso  could  have  done. 
He  also  had  many  tales  to  tell  of  the  remote  cities  like  Fez 
and  Mequinez  and  Marakeesh.  Sylvia  almost  wished  that 
she  could  pack  Mrs.  Gainsborough  off  to  England  and 
accompany  him  into  the  real  interior.  Some  of  her  satis- 
faction in  Tetuan  had  been  rather  spoiled  that  morning  by 
finding  a  visitor's  book  in  the  hotel  with  the  names  of 
traveling  clergymen  and  their  daughters  patronizingly 
inscribed  therein.  However,  Avery  decided  to  ride  away 
almost  at  once,  and  said  that  he  intended  to  banish  the 
twentieth  century  for  two  or  three  months. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  339 

They  stayed  a  few  days  at  Tetuan,  but  the  bugs  were  too 
many  for  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  who  began  to  sigh  for  a 
tranquil  bed.  Avery  and  Sylvia  had  a  short  conversation 
together  before  they  left.  He  thanked  her  for  her  sym- 
pathy, held  to  his  intention  of  spending  the  summer  in 
Morocco,  but  was  nearly  sure  he  should  return  to  England 
in  the  autumn,  with  a  mind  serenely  fixed. 

"I  wish,  if  you  go  back  to  London,  you'd  look  Jenny 
up,"  he  said. 

Sylvia  shook  her  head  very  decidedly.  "I  can't  imagine 
anything  that  would  annoy  her  more,  if  she's  the  girl  I 
suppose  her  to  be." 

"But  I'd  like  her  to  have  a  friend  like  you,"  he 
urged. 

Sylvia  looked  at  him  severely.  "Are  you  quite  sure 
that  you  don't  want  to  change  her?"  she  asked. 

"Of  course.     Why?" 

"Choosing  friends  for  somebody  else  is  not  very  wise; 
it  sounds  uncommonly  like  a  roundabout  way  of  develop- 
ing her.  No,  no,  I  won't  meet  your  Jenny." 

"I  see  what  you  mean,"  Avery  assented.  "I'll  write  to 
Michael  and  tell  him  I've  met  you.  Shall  I  tell  him  about 
Lily?  Where  is  she  now?" 

"I  don't  know.  I've  never  had  even  a  post-card.  My 
fault,  really.  Yes,  you  can  tell  Michael  that  she's  prob- 
ably quite  happy  and — no,  I  don't  think  there's  any  other 
message.  Oh  yes,  you  might  say  I've  eaten  one  or  two 
rose-leaves  but  not  enough  yet." 

Avery  looked  puzzled. 

"Apuleius,"  she  added. 

"Strange  girl.    I  wish  you  would  go  and  see  Jenny." 

"Oh  no!  She's  eaten  all  the  rose-leaves  she  wants,  and 
I'm  sure  she's  not  the  least  interested  in  Apuleius." 

Next  day  Sylvia  and  Mrs.  Gainsborough  set  out  on  the 
return  journey  to  Tangier,  which,  apart  from  a  disastrous 
attempt  by  Mrs.  Gainsborough  to  eat  a  prickly  pear, 
lacked  incident 

"Let  sleeping  pears  lie,"  said  Sylvia. 

"Well,  you  don't  expect  a  fruit  to  be  so  savage,"  re- 
torted Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "I  thought  I  must  have 
aggravated  a  wasp.  Talk  about  nettles.  They're  chammy 


340  Sylvia    Scarlett 

leather  beside  them.  Prickly  pears!  I  suppose  the  next 
thing  I  try  to  eat  will  be  stabbing  apples." 

They  went  home  by  Gibraltar,  where  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough was  delighted  to  see  English  soldiers. 

"It's  nice  to  know  we've  got  our  eyes  open  even  in 
Spain.  I  reckon  I'll  get  a  good  cup  of  tea  here." 

They  reached  England  at  the  end  of  April,  and  Sylvia 
decided  to  stay  for  a  while  at  Mulberry  Cottage.  Reading 
through  The  Stage,  she  found  that  Jack  Airdale  was  rest- 
ing at  Richmond  in  his  old  rooms,  and  went  down  to  see 
him.  He  was  looking  somewhat  thin  and  worried. 

"Had  rather  a  rotten  winter,"  he  told  her.  "I  got  ill 
with  a  quinsey  and  had  to  throw  up  a  decent  shop,  and 
somehow  or  other  I  haven't  managed  to  get  another  one 
yet." 

"Look  here,  old  son,"  Sylvia  said,  "I  don't  want  any 
damned  pride  from  you.  I've  got  plenty  of  money  at 
present.  You've  got  to  borrow  fifty  pounds.  You  want 
feeding  up  and  fitting  out.  Don't  be  a  cad  now,  and  refuse 
a  'lidy.'  Shut  up !  Shut  up !  Shut  up !  You  know  me  by  this 
time.  Who's  going  to  be  more  angry,  you  at  being  lent 
money  or  me  at  being  refused  by  one  of  the  few,  the  very 
few,  mark  you,  good  pals  I've  got?  Don't  be  a  beast,  Jack. 
You've  got  to  take  it." 

He  surrendered,  from  habit.  Sylvia  gave  him  all  her 
news,  but  the  item  that  interested  him  most  was  her  hav- 
ing half  taken  up  the  stage. 

"I  knew  you'd  make  a  hit,"  he  declared. 

"But  I  didn't." 

"My  dear  girl,  you  don't  give  yourself  a  chance.  You 
can't  play  hide  and  seek  with  the  public,  though,  by 
Jove!"  he  added,  ruefully,  "I  have  been  lately." 

"For  the  present  I  can  afford  to  wait." 

"Yes,  you're  damned  lucky  in  one  way,  and  yet  I'm  not 
sure  that  you  aren't  really  very  unlucky.  If  you  hadn't 
found  some  money  you'd  have  been  forced  to  go  on." 

"My  dear  lad,  lack  of  money  wouldn't  make  me  an 
artist." 

"What  would,  then?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.  Being  fed  up  with  everything. 
That's  what  drove  me  into  self-expression,  as  I  should  call 


Sylvia    Scarlett  341 

it  if  I  were  a  temperamental  miss  with  a  light-boiled  ego 
swimming  in  a  saucepan  of  emotion  for  the  public  to 
swallow  or  myself  to  crack.  But  conceive  my  disgust! 
There  was  I  yearning  unattainable  'isms'  from  a  soul 
nurtured  on  tragic  disillusionment,  and  I  was  applauded 
for  singing  French  songs  with  an  English  accent.  No, 
seriously,  I  shall  try  again,  old  Jack,  when  I  receive 
another  buffet.  At  present  I'm  just  dimly  uncomfortable. 
I  shall  blossom  late  like  a  chrysanthemum.  I  ain't  no 
daffodil,  I  ain't.  Or  perhaps  it  would  be  truer  to  say  that 
I  was  forced  when  young — don't  giggle,  you  ribald  ass, 
not  that  way — and  I've  got  to  give  myself  a  rest  before 
I  bloom,  en  plein  air" 

"But  you  really  have  got  plenty  of  money?"  Airdale 
inquired,  anxiously. 

"Masses!  Cataracts!  And  all  come  by  perfectly 
honest.  No,  seriously,  I've  got  about  four  thousand 
pounds." 

"Well,  I  really  do  think  you're  rather  lucky,  you 
know." 

"Of  course.  But  it's  all  written  in  the  book  of  Fate. 
Listen.  I've  got  a  mulberry  mark  on  my  arm;  I  live  at 
Mulberry  Cottage;  and  Morera,  that's  the  name  of  my 
fairy  godfather,  is  Spanish  for  mulberry-tree.  Can  you 
beat  it?" 

"I  hope  you've  invested  this  money,"  said  Airdale. 

"It's  in  a  bank." 

He  begged  her  to  be  careful  of  her  riches,  and  she  rallied 
him  on  his  inconsistency,  because  a  moment  back  he  had 
been  telling  her  that  their  possession  was  hindering  her 
progress  in  art. 

"My  dear  Sylvia,  I  haven't  known  you  for  five  years 
not  to  have  discovered  that  I  might  as  well  advise  a  school- 
master as  you,  but  what  are  you  going  to  do?" 

"Plans  for  this  summer?  A  little  gentle  reading.  A 
little  browsing  among  the  classics.  A  little  theater-going. 
A  little  lunching  at  Verrey's  with  Mr.  John  Airdale.  Rest- 
ing address,  six  Rosetree  Terrace,  Richmond,  Surrey.  A 
little  bumming  around  town,  as  Senor  Morera  would  say. 
Plans  for  the  autumn?  A  visit  to  the  island  of  Sirene,  if  I 
can  find  a  nice  lady-like  young  woman  to  accompany  me. 


342  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Mrs.  Gainsborough  has  decided  that  she  will  travel  no 
more.  Her  brain  is  bursting  with  unrelated  adventure." 

"But  you  can't  go  on  from  month  to  month  like  that." 

"Well,  if  you'll  tell  me  how  to  skip  over  December, 
January,  and  August  I'll  be  grateful,"  Sylvia  laughed. 

"No,  don't  rag  about.  I  mean  for  the  future  in  general," 
he  explained.  "Are  you  going  to  get  married  ?  You  can't 
go  on  forever  like  this." 

"Why  not?" 

"Well,  you're  young  now.  But  what's  more  gloomy 
than  a  restless  old  maid?" 

"My  dear  man,  don't  you  fret  about  my  withering.  I've 
got  a  little  crystal  flask  of  the  finest  undiluted  strychnine. 
I  believe  strychnine  quickens  the  action  of  the  heart. 
Verdict.  Death  from  attempted  galvanization  of  the 
cardiac  muscles.  No  flowers  by  request.  Boomph!  as 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  would  say.  Ring  off.  The  last  time 
I  wrote  myself  an  epitaph  it  led  me  into  matrimony. 
Absit  omen." 

Airdale  was  distressed  by  Sylvia's  joking  about  her 
death,  and  begged  her  to  stop. 

"Then  don't  ask  me  any  more  about  the  future  in 
general.  And  now  let's  go  and  be  Epicurean  at  Verrey's." 

After  Jack  Airdale  the  only  other  old  friend  that  Sylvia 
took  any  trouble  to  find  was  Olive  Fanshawe.  She  was 
away  on  tour  when  Sylvia  returned  to  England,  but  she 
came  back  to  London  in  June,  was  still  unmarried,  and  had 
been  promised  a  small  part  in  the  Vanity  production  that 
autumn.  Sylvia  found  that  Olive  had  recaptured  her 
romantic  ideals  and  was  delighted  with  her  proposal  that 
they  should  live  together  at  Mulberry  Cottage.  Olive 
took  very  seriously  her  small  part  at  the  Vanity,  of  which 
the  most  distinguished  line  was:  "Girls,  have  you  seen  the 
Duke  of  Mayfair?  He's  awfully  handsome."  Sylvia  was 
not  very  encouraging  to  Olive's  opportunities  of  being 
able  to  give  an  original  reading  of  such  a  line,  but  she  lis- 
tened patiently  to  her  variations  in  which  each  word  was 
overaccentuated  in  turn.  Luckily  there  was  also  a  melo- 
dious quintet  consisting  of  the  juvenile  lead  and  four 
beauties  of  whom  Olive  was  to  be  one;  this,  it  seemed, 
promised  to  be  a  hit,  and  indeed  it  was, 


Sylvia    Scarlett  343 

The  most  interesting  event  for  the  Vanity  world  that 
autumn,  apart  from  the  individual  successes  and  failures 
in  the  new  production,  was  the  return  of  Lord  and  Lady 
Clarehaven  to  London,  and  not  merely  their  return,  but 
their  re-entry  into  the  Bohemian  society  from  which  Lady 
Clarehaven  had  so  completely  severed  herself. 

"I  know  it's  perfectly  ridiculous  of  me,"  said  Olive, 
"but,  Sylvia,  do  you  know,  I'm  quite  nervous  at  the  idea 
of  meeting  her  again." 

A  most  cordial  note  had  arrived  from  Dorothy  inviting 
Olive  to  lunch  with  her  in  Curzon  Street. 

"Write  back  and  tell  her  you're  living  with  me," 
Sylvia  advised.  "That  '11  choke  off  some  of  the  friend- 
liness." 

But  to  Sylvia's  boundless  surprise  a  messenger-boy 
arrived  with  an  urgent  invitation  for  her  to  come  too. 

"Curiouser  and  curiouser,"  she  murmured.  "What 
does  it  mean  ?  She  surely  can't  be  tired  of  being  a  countess 
already.  I'm  completely  stumped.  However,  of  course 
we'll  put  on  our  clean  bibs  and  go.  Don't  look  so  fright- 
ened. Olive,  if  conversation  hangs  fire  at  lunch,  we'll 
tickle  the  footmen." 

"I  really  feel  quite  faint,"  said  Olive.  "My  heart's 
going  pitter-pat.  Isn't  it  silly  of  me?" 

Lunch,  to  which  Arthur  Lonsdale  had  also  been  invited, 
did  nothing  to  enlighten  Sylvia  about  the  Clarehavens' 
change  of  attitude.  Dorothy,  more  beautiful  than  ever 
and  pleasant  enough  superficially,  seemed  withal  faintly 
resentful;  Clarehaven  was  in  exuberant  spirits  and  evi- 
dently enjoying  London  tremendously.  The  only  sign 
of  tension,  well  not  exactly  tension,  but  slight  disaccord, 
and  that  was  too  strong  a  word,  was  once  when  Clarehaven, 
having  been  exceptionally  rowdy,  glanced  at  Dorothy  a 
swift  look  of  defiance  for  checking  him. 

"She's  grown  as  prim  as  a  parlor-maid,"  said  Lonsdale 
to  Sylvia  when,  after  lunch,  they  had  a  chance  of  talking 
together.  "You  ought  to  have  seen  her  on  the  ancestral 
acres.  My  mother,  who  presides  over  our  place  like  a 
Queen  Turnip,  is  without  importance  beside  Dolly,  abso- 
lutely without  importance.  It  got  on  Tony's  nerves,  that's 
about  the  truth  of  it.  He  never  could  stand  the  land.  It 


344  Sylvia    Scarlett 

has  the  same  effect  on  him  as  the  sea  has  on  some  people. 
Black  vomit,  coma,  and  death — what?" 

"Dorothy,  of  course,  played  the  countess  in  real  life  as 
seriously  as  she  would  have  played  her  on  the  stage.  She 
was  the  star,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Star!  My  dear  girl,  she  was  a  comet.  And  the 
dowager  loved  her.  They  used  to  drive  round  in  a 
barouche  and  administer  gruel  to  the  village  without 
anesthetics." 

"I  suppose  they  kept  them  for  Clarehaven,"  Sylvia 
laughed. 

"That's  it.  Of  course,  I  shouted  when  I  saw  the  state 
of  affairs,  having  first  of  all  been  called  in  to  recover  old 
Lady  Clarehaven's  reason  when  she  heard  that  her  only 
child  was  going  to  wed  a  Vanity  girl.  But  they  loved  her. 
Every  frump  in  the  county  adored  her.  It's  Tony  who 
insisted  on  this  move  to  London.  He  stood  it  in  Devon- 
shire for  two  and  a  half  years,  but  the  lights  of  the  wicked 
city — soft  music,  please — called  him,  and  they've  come 
back.  Dolly's  fed  up  to  the  wide  about  it.  I  say,  we  are  a 
pair  of  gossips.  What's  your  news?" 

"I  met  Maurice  Avery,  in  Morocco." 

"What,  Mossy  Avery!  Not  really?  Disguised  as  a 
slipper,  I  suppose.  Rum  bird.  He  got  awfully  keen  on  a 
little  girl  at  the  Orient  and  tootled  her  all  over  town  for  a 
while,  but  I  haven't  seen  him  for  months.  I  used  to  know 
him  rather  well  at  the  'Varsity:  he  was  one  of  the  esthetic 
push.  I  say,  what's  become  of  Lily  ?" 

"Married  to  a  croupier?  Not,  really.  By  Jove!  what  a 
time  I  had  over  her  with  Michael  Fane's  people.  His 
sister,  an  awfully  good  sort,  put  me  through  a  fearful 
catechism." 

"His  sister?'*  repeated  Sylvia. 

"You  know  what  Michael's  doing  now?  Greatest 
scream  on  earth.  He's  a  monk.  Some  special  kind  of  a 
monk  that  sounds  like  omelette,  but  isn't.  Nothing  to  be 
done  about  it.  I  buzzed  down  to  see  him  last  year,  and  he 
was  awfully  fed  up.  I  asked  him  if  he  couldn't  stop  monk- 
ing  for  a  bit  and  come  out  for  a  spin  on  my  new  forty-five 
Shooting  Star.  He  wasn't  in  uniform,  so  there's  no  reason 
why  he  shouldn't  have  come." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  345 

"He's  in  England,  now,  then?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"No,  he  got  fed  up  with  everybody  buzzing  down  to  see 
what  he  looked  like  as  a  monk,  and  he's  gone  off  to  Char- 
treuse or  Benedictine  or  somewhere — I  know  it's  the  name 
of  a  liqueur — somewhere  abroad.  I  wanted  him  to  become 
a  partner  in  our  business,  and  promised  we'd  put  a  jolly 
little  runabout  on  the  market  called  The  Jovial  Monk,  but 
he  wouldn't.  Look  here,  we'd  better  join  the  others. 
Dolly's  got  her  eye  on  me.  I  say,"  he  chuckled,  in  a  whis- 
per, "I  suppose  you  know  she's  a  connection  of  mine?" 

"Yes,  by  carriage." 

Lonsdale  asked  what  she  meant,  and  Sylvia  told  him  the 
origin  of  Dorothy's  name. 

"Oh,  I  say,  that's  topping.    What's  her  real  name?" 

"No,  no,"  Sylvia  said.    "I've  been  sufficiently  spiteful." 

"Probably  Buggins,  really.  I  say,  Cousin  Dorothy,"  he 
went  on,  in  a  louder  voice.  "What  about  bridge  to- 
morrow night  after  the  Empire?" 

Lady  Clarehaven  flashed  a  look  at  Sylvia,  who  could  not 
resist  shaking  her  head  and  earning  thereby  another 
sharper  flash.  When  Sylvia  talked  over  the  Clarehavens 
with  Olive,  she  found  that  Olive  had  been  quite  oblivious 
of  anything  unusual  in  the  sudden  move  to  town. 

"Of  course,  Dorothy  and  I  can  never  be  what  we  were 
to  each  other;  but  I  thought  they  seemed  so  happy  to- 
gether. I'm  so  glad  it's  been  such  a  success." 

"Well,  has  it?"  said  Sylvia,  doubtfully. 

"Oh  yes,  my  dear!  How  can  you  imagine  anything 
else?" 

With  the  deepening  of  winter  Olive  fell  ill  and  the 
doctors  prescribed  the  Mediterranean  for  her.  The 
malady  was  nothing  to  worry  about;  it  was  nothing  more 
than  fatigue;  and  if  she  were  to  rest  now  and  if  possible 
not  work  before  the  following  autumn,  there  was  every 
reason  to  expect  that  she  would  be  perfectly  cured. 

Sylvia  jumped  at  an  excuse  to  go  abroad  again  and  sug- 
gested a  visit  to  Sirene.  The  doctor,  on  being  assured  that 
Sirene  was  in  the  Mediterranean,  decided  that  it  was 
exactly  the  place  best  suited  to  Olive's  state  of  health. 
Like  most  English  doctors,  he  regarded  the  Mediterranean 
as  a  little  larger  than  the  Serpentine,  with  a  characteristic 


346  Sylvia    Scarlett 

climate  throughout.  Olive,  however,  was  much  opposed  to 
leaving  London,  and  when  Sylvia  began  to  get  annoyed 
with  her  obstinacy,  she  confessed  that  the  real  reason  for 
wishing  to  stay  was  Jack. 

" Naturally,  I  wanted  to  tell  you  at  once,  my  dear.  But 
Jack  wouldn't  let  me,  until  he  could  see  his  way  clear  to 
our  being  married.  He  was  quite  odd  about  you,  for  you 
know  how  fond  he  is  of  you — he  thinks  there's  nobody  like 
you — but  he  particularly  asked  me  not  to  tell  you  just  yet." 

"Of  course  I  know  the  reason,"  Sylvia  proclaimed, 
instantly.  "The  silly,  scrupulous,  proud  ass.  I'll  have  it 
out  with  him  to-morrow  at  lunch.  Dearest  Olive,  I'm  so 
happy  that  I  like  your  curly-headed  actor." 

"Oh,  but,  darling  Sylvia,  his  hair's  quite  straight!" 

"Yes,  but  it's  very  long  and  gets  into  his  eyes.  It's  odd 
hair,  anyway.  And  when  did  the  flaming  arrow  pin  your 
two  hearts  together?" 

"It  was  that  evening  you  played  baccarat  at  Curzon 
Street — about  ten  days  ago.  You  didn't  think  we'd 
known  long,  did  you?  Oh,  my  dear,  I  couldn't  have  kept 
the  secret  any  longer." 

Next  day  Sylvia  lunched  with  Jack  Airdale  and  came  to 
the  point  at  once. 

"Look  here,  you  detestably  true-to-type,  impossibly 
sensitive  ass,  because  I  to  please  me  lent  you  fifty  pounds,  is 
that  any  excuse  for  you  to  keep  me  out  in  the  cold  over 
you  and  Olive?  Seriously,  Jack,  I  do  think  it  was  mean  of 
you." 

Jack  was  abashed  and  mumbled  many  excuses.  He  had 
been  afraid  Sylvia  would  despise  him  for  talking  about 
marriage  when  he  owed  her  money.  He  felt,  anyway,  that 
he  wasn't  good  enough  for  Olive.  Before  Olive  had  known 
anything  about  it,  he  had  been  rather  ashamed  of  himself 
for  being  in  love  with  her;  he  felt  he  was  taking  advantage 
of  Sylvia's  friendship. 

"All  which  excuses  are  utterly  feeble,"  Sylvia  pro- 
nounced. "Now  listen.  Olive's  ill.  She  ought  to  go 
abroad.  I  very  selfishly  want  a  companion.  You've  got 
to  insist  on  her  going.  The  fifty  pounds  I  lent  you  will  pay 
her  expenses,  so  that  debt's  wiped  out,  and  you're  standing 
her  a  holiday  in  the  Mediterranean." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  347 

Jack  thought  for  a  moment  with  a  puzzled  air. 

"  Don't  be  absurd,  Sylvia.  Really  for  the  moment  you 
took  me  in  with  your  confounded  arithmetic.  Why,  you're 
doubling  the  obligation." 

"Obligation!  Obligation!  Don't  you  dare  to  talk 
about  obligations  to  me.  I  don't  believe  in  obligations. 
Am  I  to  understand  that  for  the  sake  of  your  unworthy — 
well,  it  can't  be  dignified  with  the  word — pride,  Olive  is  to 
be  kept  in  London  throughout  the  spring?" 

Jack  protested  he  had  been  talking  about  the  loan  to 
himself.  Olive's  obligation  would  be  a  different  one. 

"Jack,  have  you  ever  seen  a  respectable  woman  throw  a 
sole  Morny  across  a  restaurant?  Because  you  will  in  one 
moment.  Amen  to  the  whole  discussion.  Please!  The 
only  thing  you've  got  to  do  is  to  insist  on  Olive's  coming 
with  me.  Then  while  she's  away  you  must  be  a  good  little 
actor  and  act  away  as  hard  as  you  know  how,  so  that  you 
can  be  married  next  June  as  a  present  to  me  on  my  twenty- 
sixth  birthday." 

"You're  the  greatest  dear,"  said  Jack,  fervently. 

"Of  course  I  am.    But  I'm  waiting." 

"What  for?" 

"Why,  for  an  exhortation  to  matrimony.  Haven't  you 
noticed  that  people  who  are  going  to  get  married  always 
try  to  persuade  everybody  else  to  come  in  with  them? 
I'm  sure  human  co-operation  began  with  paleolithic 
bathers." 

So  Olive  and  Sylvia  left  England  for  Sirene. 

"I'd  like  to  be  coming  with  you,"  said  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough at  Charing  Cross.  "But  I'm  just  beginning  to 
feel  a  tiddley-bit  stiff,  and  well,  there,  after  Morocco, 
I  shouldn't  be  satisfied  with  anything  less  than  a  cannibal 
island,  and  it's  too  late  for  me  to  start  in  being  a  Robinson 
Crusoe,  which  reminds  me  that  when  I  took  Mrs.  Beard- 
more  to  the  Fulham  pantomime  last  night  it  was  Dick 
Whittington.  And  upon  my  soul,  if  he  didn't  go  to 
Morocco  with  his  cat.  'Well/  I  said  to  Mrs.  Beardmore, 
'it's  not  a  bit  like  it.'  I  told  her  that  if  Dick  Whittington 
went  there  now  he  wouldn't  take  his  cat  with  him.  He'd 
take  a  box  of  Keating's.  Somebody  behind  said,  'Hush.' 
And  I  said,  'Hush  yourself.  Perhaps  you've  been  to 


348  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Morocco?'  Which  made  him  look  very  silly,  for  I  don't 
suppose  he's  ever  been  further  East  than  Aldgate  in  his 
life.  We  had  no  more  'hushes'  from  him,  I  can  tell  you; 
and  Mrs.  Beardmore  looked  round  at  him  in  a  very  lady- 
like way  which  she's  got  from  being  a  housekeeper,  and 
said,  'My  friend  has  been  to  Morocco/  After  that  we 
la-la'd  the  chorus  in  peace  and  quiet.  Good-by,  duckies, 
and  don't  gallivant  about  too  much." 

Sylvia  had  brought  a  bagful  of  books  about  the  Roman 
emperors,  and  Olive  had  brought  a  number  of  anthologies 
that  made  up  by  the  taste  of  the  binder  for  the  lack  of  it  in 
the  compiler.  They  were  mostly  about  love.  To  satisfy 
Sylvia's  historical  passion  a  week  was  spent  in  Rome  and 
another  week  in  Naples.  She  told  Olive  of  her  visit  to 
Italy  with  Philip  over  seven  years  ago,  and,  much  to  her 
annoyance,  Olive  poured  out  a  good  deal  of  emotion  over 
that  hapless  marriage. 

"Don't  you  feel  any  kind  of  sentimental  regret?"  she 
asked  while  they  were  watching  from  Posilipo  the  vapors 
of  Vesuvius  rose-plumed  in  the  wintry  sunset.  "Surely 
you  feel  softened  toward  it  all  now.  Why,  I  think  I  should 
regret  anything  that  had  once  happened  in  this  divinely 
beautiful  place." 

"The  thing  I  remember  most  distinctly  is  Philip's  having 
read  somewhere  that  the  best  way  to  get  rid  of  an  impor- 
tunate guide  was  to  use  the  local  negative  and  throw  the 
head  back  instead  of  shaking  it.  The  result  was  that 
Philip  used  to  walk  about  as  if  he  were  gargling.  To  annoy 
him  I  used  to  wink  behind  his  back  at  the  guides,  and 
naturally  with  such  encouragement  his  local  negative  was 
absolutely  useless." 

"I  think  you  must  have  been  rather  trying,  Sylvia 
dear." 

"Oh,  I  was — infernally  trying,  but  one  doesn't  marry  a 
child  of  seventeen  as  a  sedative." 

"I  think  it's  all  awfully  sad,"  Olive  sighed. 

Sylvia  had  rather  a  shock,  a  few  days  after  they  had 
reached  Sirene,  when  she  saw  Miss  Home  and  Miss  Ho- 
bart  drive  past  on  the  road  up  to  Anasirene,  the  green  rival 
of  Sirene  among  the  clouds  to  the  west  of  the  island.  She 
made  inquiries  at  the  pension  and  was  informed  that  two 


Sylvia    Scarlett  349 

sisters  Miss  Hobart-Horne,  English  millionaires  many 
times  over,  had  lived  at  Sirene  these  five  years.  Sylvia 
decided  that  it  would  be  quite  easy  to  avoid  meeting  them, 
and  warned  Olive  against  making  friends  with  any  of  the 
residents,  on  the  plea  that  she  did  not  wish  to  meet  people 
whom  she  had  met  here  seven  years  ago  with  her  husband. 
In  the  earlier  part  of  the  spring  they  stayed  at  a  pension, 
but  Sylvia  found  that  it  was  difficult  to  escape  from  people 
there,  and  they  moved  up  to  Anasirene,  where  they  took  a 
villino  that  was  cut  off  from  all  dressed-up  humanity  by  a 
sea  of  olives.  Here  it  was  possible  to  roam  by  paths  that 
were  not  frequented  save  by  peasants  whose  personalities 
so  long  attuned  to  earth  had  lost  the  power  of  detaching 
themselves  from  the  landscape  and  did  not  affect  the  on- 
looker more  than  the  movement  of  trees  or  the  rustle  of 
small  beasts.  Life  was  made  up  of  these  essentially  undis- 
turbing  personalties  set  in  a  few  pictures  that  escaped  from 
the  swift  southern  spring:  anemones  splashed  out  like 
wine  upon  the  green  corn;  some  girl  with  slanting  eyes 
that  regarded  coldly  a  dead  bird  in  her  thin  brown  hand; 
red-beaded  cherry-trees  that  threw  shadows  on  the  tawny 
wheat  below;  wind  over  the  olives  and  the  sea,  wind  that 
shook  the  tresses  of  the  broom  and  ruffled  the  scarlet 
poppies;  then  suddenly  the  first  cicala  and  eternal  noon. 

It  would  have  been  hard  to  say  how  they  spent  these 
four  months,  Sylvia  thought. 

"Can  you  bear  to  leave  your  oeloved  trees,  your  name- 
sakes?" she  asked. 

"Jack  is  getting  impatient,"  said  Olive. 

"Then  we  must  fade  out  of  Anasirene  just  as  one  by  one 
the  flowers  have  all  faded." 

"I  don't  think  I've  faded  much,"  Olive  laughed.  "I 
never  felt  so  well  in  my  life,  thanks  to  you." 

Jack  and  Olive  were  married  at  the  end  of  June.  It  was 
necessary  to  go  down  to  a  small  Warwickshire  town  and 
meet  all  sorts  of  country  people  that  reminded  Sylvia  of 
Green  Lanes.  Olive's  father,  who  was  a  solicitor,  was  very 
anxious  for  Sylvia  to  stay  when  the  wedding  was  over.  He 
was  cheating  the  gods  out  of  half  their  pleasure  in  making 
him  a  solicitor  by  writing  a  history  of  Warwickshire 
worthies.  Sylvia  had  so  much  impressed  him  as  an  intelli- 


Sylvia    Scarlett 

gent  observer  tnat  he  would  have  liked  to  retain  her  at  his 
elbow  for  a  while.  She  would  not  stay,  however.  The 
particular  song  that  the  sirens  had  sung  to  her  during  her 
sojourn  in  their  territory  was  about  writing  a  book.  They 
called  her  back  now  and  flattered  her  with  a  promise  of 
inspiration.  Sylvia  was  not  much  more  ready  to  believe 
in  sirens  than  in  mortals,  and  she  resisted  the  impulse  to 
return.  Nevertheless,  with  half  an  idea  of  scoring  off 
them  by  writing  the  book  somewhere  else,  she  settled 
down  in  Mulberry  Cottage  to  try:  the  form  should  be 
essays,  and  she  drew  up  a  list  of  subjects: — 

1.  Obligations. 

Judiac  like  the  rest  of  our  moral  system;  post  obits  on 
human  gratitude. 

2.  Friendship. 

A  flowery  thing.  Objectionable  habit  of  keeping  pressed 
flowers. 

3.  Marriage. 

Judiac.  Include  this  with  obligations;  nothing  wrong 
with  the  idea  of  marriage.  The  marriage  of  convenience 
probably  more  honest  than  the  English  marriage  of  so-called 
affection.  Levi  the  same  as  Lewis. 

4.  Gambling. 

A  moral  occupation  that  brings  out  the  worst  side  of 
everybody. 

5.  Development. 

Exploiting  human  personality.     Judiac,  of  course. 

6.  Acting. 

A  low  art  form;  oh  yes,  very  low;  being  paid  for  what 
the  rest  of  the  world  does  for  nothing. 

7.  Prostitution. 

Selling  one's  body  to  keep  one's  soul.  This  is  the  meaning 
of  the  sins  that  were  forgiven  to  the  woman  because  she  loved 
much.  One  might  say  of  most  marriages  that  they  were 
selling  one's  soul  to  keep  one's  body. 

Sylvia  found  that  when  she  started  to  write  on  these  and 
other  subjects  she  knew  nothing  about  them;  the  conse- 
quence was  that  summer  passed  into  autumn  and  autumn 
into  winter  while  she  went  on  reading  history  and  philos- 
ophy. For  pastime  she  played  baccarat  at  Curzon  Street 


Sylvia    Scarlett  351 

and  lost  six  hundred  pounds.  In  February  she  decided 
that,  so  much  having  been  written  on  the  subjects  she  had 
chosen,  it  was  useless  to  write  any  more.  She  went  to  stay 
with  Jack  and  Olive,  who  were  now  living  in  West  Ken- 
sington. Olive  was  expecting  a  baby  in  April. 

"If  it's  a  boy,  we're  going  to  call  him  Sylvius.  But  if 
it's  a  girl,  Jack  says  we  can't  call  her  Sylvia,  because  for 
us  there  can  never  be  more  than  one  Sylvia." 

"Call  her  Argentina." 

"No,  we're  going  to  call  her  Sylvia  Rose.'* 

"Well,  I  hope  it  '11  be  a  boy,"  said  Sylvia.  "Anyway, 
I  hope  it  '11  be  a  boy,  because  there  are  too  many  girls." 

Olive  announced  that  she  had  taken  a  cottage  in  the 
country  close  to  where  her  people  lived,  and  that  Sylvius 
or  Sylvia  Rose  was  to  be  born  there;  she  thought  it  was 
right. 

"I  don't  know  why  childbirth  should  be  more  moral  in 
the  country,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Oh,  it's  nothing  to  do  with  morals;  it's  on  account  of 
baby's  health.  You  will  come  and  stay  with  me,  won't 


you 


In  March,  therefore,  Sylvia  went  down  to  Warwickshire 
with  Olive,  much  to  the  gratification  of  Mr.  Fanshawe. 
It  was  a  close  race  whether  he  would  be  a  grandfather  or 
an  author  first,  but  in  the  end  Mr.  Fanshawe  had  the 
pleasure  of  placing  a  copy  of  his  work  on  Warwickshire 
worthies  in  the  hands  of  the  monthly  nurse  before  she 
could  place  in  his  arms  a  grandchild.  Three  days  later 
Olive  brought  into  the  world  a  little  girl  and  a  little  boy. 
Jack  was  acting  in  Dundee.  The  problem  of  nomenclature 
was  most  complicated.  Olive  had  to  think  it  all  out  over 
again  from  the  beginning.  Jack  had  to  be  consulted  by 
telegram  about  every  change,  and  on  occasions  where 
accuracy  was  all-important,  the  post-office  clerks  were 
usually  most  careless.  For  instance,  Mr.  Fanshawe 
thought  it  would  be  charming  to  celebrate  the  forest  of 
Arden  by  calling  the  children  Orlando  and  Rosalind: 
Jack  thereupon  replied: 

Do  not  like  Rosebud.    What  will  boy  be  called.     Suggest  Palestine. 
First  name  arrived  Ostend.    If  Oswald  no. 
23 


352  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Palestine!"  exclaimed  Olive. 

"Obviously  Valentine,"  said  Sylvia.  "But  look  here, 
why  not  Sylvius  for  the  boy  and  Rose  for  the  girl?  'Rose 
Airdale,  all  were  thine!'" 

When  several  more  telegrams  had  been  exchanged  to 
enable  Olive,  in  Warwickshire,  to  be  quite  sure  that  Jack, 
by  this  time  in  Aberdeen,  had  got  the  names  right,  Sylvius 
and  Rose  were  decided  upon,  though  Mr.  Fanshawe 
advocated  Audrey  for  the  girl  with  such  pertinacity  that 
he  even  went  as  far  as  to  argue  with  his  daughter  on  the 
steps  of  the  font.  Indeed,  as  Sylvia  said  afterward,  if  the 
clergyman  had  not  been  so  deaf,  Rose  would  probably  be 
Audrey  at  this  moment. 

On  the  afternoon  of  the  christening  Sylvia  received  a 
telegram. 

"Too  late,"  she  said,  with  a  laugh,  as  she  tore  it  open. 
"He  can't  change  his  mind  now." 

But  the  telegram  was  signed  "Beardmore"  and  asked 
Sylvia  to  come  at  once  to  London  because  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough was  very  ill. 

When  she  arrived  at  Mulberry  Cottage,  on  a  fine  morn- 
ing in  early  June,  Mrs.  Beardmore,  whom  Sylvia  had  never 
seen,  was  gravely  accompanying  two  other  elderly  women 
to  the  garden  door. 

"She's  not  dead?"  Sylvia  cried. 

The  three  friends  shook  their  heads  and  sighed. 

"Not  yet,  poor  soul,"  said  the  thinnest,  bursting  into 
tears. 

This  must  be  Mrs.  Ewings. 

"I'm  just  going  to  send  another  doctor,"  said  the  most 
majestic,  which  must  be  Mrs.  Marsham. 

Mrs.  Beardmore  said  nothing,  but  she  sniffed  and  led 
the  way  toward  the  house.  Mrs.  Marsham  and  Mrs. 
Ewings  went  off  together. 

Inside  the  darkened  room,  but  not  so  dark  in  the  June 
sunshine  as  to  obscure  entirely  the  picture  of  Captain 
Dashwood  in  whiskers  that  hung  upon  the  wall  by  her 
bed,  Mrs.  Gainsborough  lay  breathing  heavily.  The  nurse 
made  a  gesture  of  silence  and  came  out  tiptoe  from  the 
room.  Down-stairs  in  the  parlor  Sylvia  listened  to  Mrs. 
Beardmore's  story  of  the  illness. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  353 

"I  heard  nothing  till  three  days  ago,  when  the  woman 
who  comes  in  of  a  morning  ascertained  from  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough the  wish  she  had  for  me  to  visit  her.  The  Misses 
Hargreaves,  with  who  I  reside,  was  exceptionally  kind  and 
insisted  upon  me  taking  the  tram  from  Kew  that  very 
moment.  I  communicated  with  Mrs.  Marsham  and  Mrs. 
Ewings,  but  they,  both  having  lodgers,  was  unable  to 
evacuate  their  business,  and  Mrs.  Gainsborough  was 
excessively  anxious  as  you  should  be  communicated  with 
on  the  telegraph,  which  I  did  accordingly.  We  have  two 
nurses  night  and  day,  and  the  doctor  is  all  that  can  be 
desired,  all  that  can  be  desired,  notwithstanding  whatever 
Mrs.  Marsham  may  say  to  the  contrary;  Mrs.  Marsham, 
who  I've  known  for  some  years,  has  that  habit  of  contra- 
dicting everybody  else  something  outrageous.  Mrs. 
Ewings  and  me  was  both  entirely  satisfied  with  Doctor 
Barker.  I'm  very  glad  you've  come,  Miss  Scarlett,  and 
Mrs.  Gainsborough  will  be  very  glad  you've  come.  If 
you'll  permit  the  liberty  of  the  observation,  Mrs.  Gains- 
borough is  very  fond  of  you.  As  soon  as  she  wakes  up 
I  shall  have  to  get  back  to  Kew,  not  wishing  to  trespass 
too  much  on  the  kindness  of  the  two  Misses  Hargreaves 
to  who  I  act  as  housekeeper.  It's  her  heart  that's  the 
trouble.  Double  pneumonia  through  pottering  in  the 
garden.  That's  what  the  doctor  diag — yes,  that's  what 
the  doctor  says,  and  though  Mrs.  Marsham  contradicted 
him,  taking  the  words  out  of  his  mouth  and  throwing 
them  back  in  his  face,  and  saying  it  was  nothing  of  the 
kind  but  going  to  the  King's  funeral,  I  believe  he's  right." 

Mrs.  Beardmore  went  back  to  Kew.  Mrs.  Gains- 
Dorough,  who  had  been  in  a  comatose  state  all  the  after- 
noon, began  to  wander  in  her  mind  about  an  hour  before 
sunset. 

"It's  very  dark.  High  time  the  curtain  went  up.  The 
house  will  be  getting  impatient  in  a  minute.  It's  not  to  be 
supposed  they'll  wait  all  night.  Certainly  not." 

Sylvia  drew  the  curtains  back,  and  the  room  was  flooded 
with  gold. 

"That's  better.  Much  better.  The  country  smells 
beautiful,  don't  it,  this  morning?  The  glory  die-Johns 
are  a  treat  this  year,  but  the  captain  he  always  likes  a 


354  Sylvia.    Scarlett 

camellia  or  a  gardenia.  Well,  if  they  start  in  building  over 
your  nursery,  pa  .  .  .  Certainly  not,  certainly  not.  They'll 
build  over  everything.  Now  don't  talk  about  dying,  Bob. 
Don't  let's  be  dismal  on  our  anniversary.  Certainly  not." 

She  suddenly  recognized  Sylvia  and  her  mind  cleared. 

"Oh,  I  am  glad  you've  come.  Really,  you  know,  I  hate 
to  make  a  fuss,  but  I'm  not  feeling  at  all  meself.  I'm  just 
a  tiddley-bit  ill,  it's  my  belief.  Sylvia,  give  me  your  hand. 
Sylvia,  I'm  joking.  I  really  am  remarkably  ill.  Oh, 
there's  no  doubt  I'm  going  to  die.  What  a  beautiful 
evening!  Yes,  it's  not  to  be  supposed  I'm  going  to  live 
forever,  and  there,  after  all,  I'm  not  sorry.  As  soon  as  I 
began  to  get  that  stiffness  I  thought  it  meant  I  was  not 
meself.  And  what's  the  good  of  hanging  about  if  you're 
not  yourself?" 

The  nurse  came  forward  and  begged  her  not  to  talk  too 
much. 

"You  can't  stop  me  talking.  There  was  a  clergyman 
came  through  Mrs.  Ewings's  getting  in  a  state  about  me, 
and  he  talked  till  I  was  sick  and  tired  of  the  sound  of  his 
voice.  Talked  away,  he  did,  about  the  death  of  Our  Lord 
and  being  nailed  to  the  cross.  It  made  me  very  dismal. 
'Here,  when  did  all  this  occur?'  I  asked.  'Nineteen  hun- 
dred and  ten  years  ago,'  he  said.  'Oh  well,'  I  said,  'it  all 
occurred  such  a  long  time  ago  and  it's  all  so  sad,  let's  hope 
it  never  occurred  at  all.' ' 

The  nurse  said  firmly  that  if  Mrs.  Gainsborough  would 
not  stop  talking  she  should  have  to  make  Sylvia  go  out  of 
the  room. 

"There's  a  tyrant,"  said  Mrs.  Gainsborough.  "Well, 
just  sit  by  me  quietly  and  hold  my  hand." 

The  sun  set  behind  the  housetops.  Mrs.  Gainsborough's 
hand  was  cold  when  twilight  came. 

Sylvia  felt  that  it  was  out  of  the  question  to  stay  longer 
at  Mulberry  Cottage,  though  Miss  Dashwood,  to  whom 
the  little  property  reverted,  was  very  anxious  for  her  to  do 
so.  After  the  funeral  Sylvia  joined  Olive  and  Jack  in 
Warwickshire. 

They  realized  that  she  was  feeling  very  deeply  the  death 
of  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  and  were  anxious  that  she  should 
arrange  to  live  with  them  in  West  Kensington. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  355 

Sylvia,  however,  said  that  she  wished  to  remain  friends 
with  them,  and  declined  the  proposal. 

"Do  you  remember  what  I  told  you  once,"  she  said  to 
Jack,  "about  going  back  to  the  stage  in  some  form  or 
another  when  I  was  tired  of  things  ?" 

Jack,  who  had  not  yet  renounced  his  ambition  for  Syl- 
via's theatrical  career,  jumped  at  the  opportunity  of  find- 
ing her  an  engagement,  and  when  they  all  went  back  to 
London  with  the  babies  he  rushed  about  the  Strand  to  see 
what  was  going.  Sylvia  moved  all  her  things  from  Mul- 
berry Cottage  to  the  Airdales'  house,  refusing  once  more 
Miss  Dashwood's  almost  tearful  offer  to  make  over  the 
cottage  to  her.  She  was  sorry  to  withstand  the  old  lady, 
who  was  very  frail  by  now,  but  she  knew  that  if  she  ac- 
cepted, it  would  mean  more  dreaming  about  writing  books 
and  gambling  at  Curzon  Street,  and  ultimately  doing 
nothing  until  it  was  too  late. 

"I'm  reaching  the  boring  idle  thirties.  I'm  twenty- 
seven,"  she  told  Jack  and  Olive.  "I  must  sow  a  few  more 
wild  oats  before  my  face  is  plowed  with  wrinkles  to  receive 
the  respectable  seeds  of  a  flourishing  old  age.  By  the  way, 
as  demon-godmother  I've  placed  one  thousand  pounds 
to  the  credit  of  Rose  and  Sylvius." 

The  parents  protested,  but  Sylvia  would  take  no  denial. 

"I've  kept  lots  for  myself,"  she  assured  them.  As  a 
matter  of  fact,  she  had  nearly  another  £1,000  in  the  bank. 

At  the  end  of  July  Jack  came  in  radiant  to  say  that  a 
piece  with  an  English  company  was  being  sent  over  to  New 
York  the  following  month.  There  was  a  small  part  for 
which  the  author  required  somebody  whose  personality 
seemed  to  recall  Sylvia's.  Would  she  read  it?  Sylvia  said 
she  would. 

"The  author  was  pleased,  eh?"  Jack  asked,  enthusi- 
astically, when  Sylvia  came  back  from  the  trial. 

"I  don't  really  know.  Whenever  he  tried  to  speak,  the 
manager  said, '  One  moment,  please ';  it  was  like  a  boxing- 
match.  However,  as  the  important  thing  seemed  to  be 
that  I  should  speak  English  with  a  French  accent,  I  was 
engaged." 

Sylvia  could  not  help  being  amused  at  herself  when  she 
found  that  her  first  essay  with  legitimate  drama  was  to  be 


356  Sylvia    Scarlett 

the  exact  converse  of  her  first  essay  with  the  variety  stage, 
dependent,  as  before,  upon  a  kind  of  infirmity.  Really, 
the  only  time  she  had  been  able  to  express  herself  naturally 
in  public  had  been  when  she  sang  "The  Raggle-taggle 
Gipsies"  with  the  Pink  Pierrots,  and  that  had  been  a 
failure.  However,  a  tour  in  the  States  would  give  her  a 
new  glimpse  of  life,  which  at  twenty-seven  was  the 
important  consideration;  and  perhaps  New  York,  more 
generous  than  other  capitals,  would  give  her  life  itself,  or 
one  of  the  only  two  things  in  life  that  mattered,  success 
and  love. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

PHE  play  in  which  Sylvia  was  to  appear  in  New  York 
1  was  called  "A  Honeymoon  in  Europe,"  and  if  it 
might  be  judged  from  the  first  few  rehearsals,  at  which  the 
performers  had  read  their  parts  like  half-witted  board- 
school  children,  it  was  thin  stuff.  Still,  it  was  not  fair  to 
pass  a  final  opinion  without  the  two  American  stars  who 
were  awaiting  the  English  company  in  their  native  land. 
The  author,  Mr.  Marchmont  Hearne,  was  a  timid  little 
man  who  between  the  business  manager  and  producer 
looked  and  behaved  very  much  like  the  Dormouse  at  the 
Mad  Tea-party.  The  manager  did  not  resemble  the 
Hatter  except  in  the  broad  brim  of  his  top-hat,  which  in 
mid-Atlantic  he  reluctantly  exchanged  for  a  cloth  cap. 
The  company  declared  he  was  famous  for  his  tact;  cer- 
tainly he  managed  to  suppress  the  Dormouse  at  every 
point  by  shouting,  "One  minute,  Mr.  Stern,  please"  or, 
"Please,  Mr.  Burns,  one  minute,"  and  apologizing  at 
once  so  effusively  for  not  calling  him  by  his  right  name 
that  the  poor  little  Dormouse  had  no  courage  to  contest 
the  real  point  at  issue,  which  had  nothing  to  do  with  his 
name.  When  the  manager  had  to  exercise  a  finer  tactful- 
ness,  as  with  obdurate  actresses,  he  was  wont  to  soften  his 
remarks  by  adding  that  nothing  "derogatory"  had  been 
intended;  this  seemed  to  mollify  everybody,  probably, 
Sylvia  thought,  because  it  was  such  a  long  word.  The 
Hatter's  name  was  Charles  Fitzherbert.  The  producer, 
Mr.  Wade  Fortescue,  by  the  length  of  his  ears,  by  the  way 
in  which  his  electrical  hair  propelled  itself  into  a  peak  on 
either  side  of  his  head,  and  by  his  wild,  artistic  eye,  was 
really  rather  like  the  March  Hare  outwardly;  his  behavior 
was  not  less  like.  Mr.  Fortescue's  attitude  toward 
"A  Honeymoon  in  Europe"  was  one  that  Beethoven 
might  have  taken  up  on  being  invited  to  orchestrate 


358  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay."  The  author  did  not  go  so  far 
as  to  resent  this  attitude,  but  on  many  occasions  he  was 
evidently  pained  by  it,  notwithstanding  Mr.  Fitzherbert's 
assurances  that  Mr.  Fortescue  had  intended  nothing 
"derogatory." 

Sylvia's  part  was  that  of  a  French  chambermaid.  The 
author  had  drawn  it  faithfully  to  his  experience  of  Paris  in 
the  course  of  several  week-ends.  As  his  conception  coin- 
cided with  that  of  the  general  public  in  supposing  a  French 
chambermaid  to  be  a  cross  between  a  street-walker  and  a 
tight-rope  walker,  it  seemed  probable  that  the  part  would 
be  a  success;  although  Mr.  Fortescue  wanted  to  mix  the 
strain  still  further  by  introducing  the  blood  of  a  comic 
ventriloquist. 

"You  must  roll  your  '  r's '  more,  Miss  Scarlett,"  he  as- 
sured her.  "That  line  will  go  for  nothing  as  you  said  it." 

"I  said  it  as  a  French  chambermaid  would  say  it," 
Sylvia  insisted. 

"If  I  might  venture — "  the  Dormouse  began. 

"One  minute,  please,  Mr.  Treherne,"  interrupted  the 
Mad  Hatter.  "What  Mr.  Fortescue  wants,  Miss  Scarlett, 
is  exaggeration — a  leetle  exaggeration.  I  believe  that  is 
what  you  want,  Mr.  Fortescue?" 

"I  don't  want  a  caricature,"  snapped  the  March  Hare. 
"The  play  is  farcical  enough  as  it  is.  What  I  want  to 
impart  is  realism.  I  want  Miss  Scarlett  to  say  the  line  as  a 
French  girl  would  say  it." 

"Precisely,"  said  the  Hatter.  "That's  precisely  what  I 
was  trying  to  explain  to  Miss  Scarlett.  You're  a  bit  hasty, 
old  chap,  you  know,  and  I  think  you  frightened  her  a  little. 
That's  all  right,  Miss  Scarlett,  there's  nothing  to  be 
frightened  about.  Mr.  Fortescue  intended  nothing  derog- 
atory." 

"I'm  not  in  the  least  frightened,"  said  Sylvia,  indig- 
nantly. 

"If  I  might  make  a  suggestion,  I  think  that — '  the 
Dormouse  began. 

"One  minute  please,  please,  Mr.  Burns,  one  minute — 
Ah,  dear  me,  Mr.  Hearne,  I  was  confusing  you  with  the 
poet.  Nothing  derogatory  in  that,  eh  ?"  he  laughed  jovially. 

"May  I  ask  a  question?"  said  Sylvia,  and  asked  it  before 


Sylvia    Scarlett  359 

Mr.  Fitzherbert  could  interrupt  again.  "Why  do  all 
English  authors  draw  all  Frenchwomen  as  cocottes  and  all 
French  authors  draw  all  English  women  as  governesses? 
The  answer's  obvious." 

The  Mad  Hatter  and  the  March  Hare  were  so  much 
taken  aback  by  this  attack  from  Alice  that  the  Dormouse 
was  able  to  emit  an  entire  sentence. 

"I  should  like  to  say  that  Miss  Scarlett's  rendering  of 
the  accent  gives  me  great  satisfaction.  I  have  no  fault  to 
find.  I  shall  be  much  obliged,  Miss  Scarlett,  if  you  will 
correct  my  French  whenever  necessary.  I  am  fully  sensi- 
ble of  its  deficiencies." 

Mr.  Marchmont  Hearne  blinked  after  this  challenge 
and  breathed  rather  heavily. 

"I've  had  a  good  deal  of  experience,"  said  Mr.  Fortes- 
cue,  grimly,  "but  I  never  yet  found  that  it  improved  a 
play  to  allow  the  performers  of  minor  roles,  essentially 
minor  roles,  to  write  their  parts  in  at  rehearsal." 

Mr.  Fitzherbert  was  in  a  quandary  for  a  moment 
whether  he  should  smoothe  the  rufflings  of  the  author  or 
of  the  actress  or  of  the  producer,  but  deciding  that  the 
author  could  be  more  profitable  to  his  career  in  the  end,  he 
took  him  up-stage  and  tried  to  whisper  away  Mr.  Fortes- 
cue's  bad  temper.  In  the  end  Sylvia  was  allowed  to  roll 
her  "r's"  at  her  own  pace. 

"I'm  glad  you  stood  up  to  him,  dear,"  said  an  elderly 
actress  like  a  pink  cabbage  rose  fading  at  the  tips  of  the 
petals,  who  had  been  sitting  throughout  the  rehearsal  so 
nearly  on  the  scene  that  she  was  continually  being  ad- 
dressed in  mistake  by  people  who  really  were  "on."  The 
author,  who  had  once  or  twice  smiled  at  her  pleasantly, 
was  evidently  under  the  delusion  that  she  was  interested 
in  his  play. 

"Yes,  I  was  delighted  with  the  way  you  stood  up  to 
them,"  continued  Miss  Nancy  Tremayne.  "My  part's 
wretched,  dear.  All  feeding!  Still,  if  I'm  allowed  to  slam 
the  door  when  I  go  off  in  the  third  act,  I  may  get  a  hand. 
Have  you  ever  been  to  New  York  before?  I  like  it  myself, 
and  you  can  live  quite  cheaply  if  you  know  the  ropes.  Of 
course,  I'm  drawing  a  very  good  salary,  because  they 
wanted  me.  I  said  I  couldn't  come  for  a  penny  under 


360  Sylvia    Scarlett 

one  hundred  dollars,  and  I  really  didn't  want  to  come  at 
all.  However,  he  would  have  me,  and  between  you  and 
me,  I'm  really  rather  glad  to  have  the  chance  of  saving  a 
little  money.  The  managers  are  getting  very  stingy  in 
England.  Don't  tell  anybody  what  I'm  getting,  will  you, 
dear?  One  doesn't  like  to  create  jealousy  at  the  com- 
mencement of  a  tour.  It  seems  to  be  quite  a  nice  crowd, 
though  the  girls  look  a  little  old,  don't  you  think?  Amy 
Melhuish,  who's  playing  the  ingenue,  must  be  at  least 
thirty.  It's  wonderful  how  some  women  have  the  nerve  to 
go  on.  I  gave  up  playing  ingenues  as  soon  as  I  was  over 
twenty-eight,  and  that's  four  years  ago  now,  or  very 
nearly.  Oh  dear,  how  time  flies!" 

Sylvia  thought  that,  if  Miss  Tremayne  was  only  twenty- 
eight  four  years  ago,  time  must  have  crawled. 

"They're  sending  us  out  in  the  Minneworra.  The  usual 
economy,  but  really  in  a  way  it's  nicer,  because  it's  all  one 
class.  Yes,  I'm  glad  you  stood  up  to  them,  dear.  Fortes- 
cue's  been  impossible  ever  since  he  produced  one  of  those 
filthy  Strindberg  plays  last  summer  for  the  Unknown 
Plays  Committee.  I  hate  this  continental  muck.  Degen- 
erate, I  say  it  is.  In  my  opinion  Ibsen  has  spoiled  the 
drama  in  England.  What  do  you  think  of  Charlie  Fitz- 
herbert?  He's  such  a  nice  man.  Always  ready  to  smooth 
over  any  little  difficulties.  When  Mr.  Vernon  said  to  me 
that  Charlie  would  be  coming  with  us,  I  felt  quite  safe." 

"Morally?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Oh,  go  on!  You  know  what  I  mean.  Comfortable, 
and  not  likely  to  be  stranded.  Well,  I'm  always  a  little 
doubtful  about  American  productions.  I  suppose  I'm 
conservative.  I  like  old-fashioned  ways." 

Which  was  not  surprising,  Sylvia  thought. 

"Miss  Tremayne,  I  can't  hear  myself  speak.  Are  you 
on  in  this  scene?"  demanded  the  producer. 

"I  really  don't  know.    My  next  cue  is — " 

"I  don't  think  Miss  Tremayne  comes  on  till  Act  Three," 
said  the  author. 

"We  sha'n't  get  there  for  another  two  hours,"  the  pro- 
ducer growled. 

Miss  Tremayne  moved  her  chair  back  three  feet,  and 
turned  to  finish  her  conversation  with  Sylvia. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  361 

"What  I  was  going  to  say  when  I  was  interrupted,  dear, 
was  that,  if  you're  a  bad  sailor,  you  ought  to  make  a  point 
of  making  friends  with  the  purser.  Unfortunately  I  don't 
know  the  purser  on  the  Minneworra,  but  the  purser  on 
the  Minnetoota  was  quite  a  friend  of  mine,  and  gave  me 
a  beautiful  deck-cabin.  The  other  girls  were  very 
jealous." 

"Damn  it,  Miss  Tremayne,  didn't  I  ask  you  not  to  go 
on  talking?"  the  producer  shouted. 

"Nice  gentlemanly  way  of  asking  anybody  not  to 
whisper  a  few  words  of  advice,  isn't  it?"  said  Miss  Tre- 
mayne, with  a  scathing  glance  at  Mr.  Fortescue  as  she 
moved  her  chair  quite  six  feet  farther  away  from  the  scene. 

"Now,  of  course,  we're  in  a  draught,"  she  grumbled  to 
Sylvia.  "  But  I  always  say  that  producers  never  have  any 
consideration  for  anybody  but  themselves." 

By  the  time  the  S.S.  Minneworra  reached  New  York 
Sylvia  had  come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  representatives 
of  the  legitimate  drama  differed  only  from  the  chorus  of  a 
musical  comedy  in  taking  their  temperaments  and  exits 
more  seriously.  Sylvia's  earlier  experience  had  led  her  to 
suppose  that  the  quantity  of  make-up  and  proximity  to 
the  footlights  were  the  most  important  things  in  art. 

Whatever  hopes  of  individual  ability  to  shine  the  com- 
pany might  have  cherished  before  it  reached  New  York 
were  quickly  dispelled  by  the  two  American  stars,  up  to 
whom  and  not  with  whom  they  were  expected  to  twinkle. 
Mr.  Diomed  Olver  and  Miss  Marcia  Neville  regarded  the 
rest  of  the  company  as  Jupiter  and  Venus  might  regard  the 
Milky  Way.  Miss  Tremayne's  exit  upon  a  slammed  door 
was  forbidden  the  first  time  she  tried  it,  because  it  would 
distract  the  attention  of  the  audience  from  Miss  Neville, 
who  at  that  moment  would  be  sustaining  a  dimple,  which 
she  called  holding  a  situation.  This  dimple,  which  was 
famous  from  Boston  to  San  Francisco,  from  Buffalo  to 
New  Orleans,  had,  when  Miss  Neville  first  swam  into  the 
ken  of  a  manager's  telescope,  been  easy  enough  to  sustain. 
Of  late  years  a  slight  tendency  toward  stoutness  had  made 
it  necessary  to  assist  the  dimple  with  the  forefinger  and 
internal  suction;  the  slamming  of  a  door  might  disturb  so 
nice  an  operation,  and  an  appeal,  which  came  oddly  from 


362  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Miss  Neville,  was  made  to  Miss  Tremayne's  sense  of 
natural  acting. 

Mr.  Olver  did  not  bother  to  conceal  his  intention  of 
never  moving  from  the  center  of  the  stage,  where  he  main- 
tained himself  with  the  noisy  skill  of  a  gyroscope. 

"See  here,"  he  explained  to  members  of  the  company 
who  tried  to  compete  with  his  stellar  supremacy.  "The 
public  pays  to  see  Diomed  Olver  and  Marcia  Neville; 
they  don't  care  a  damned  cent  for  anything  else  in  crea- 
tion. Got  me?  That's  good.  Now  we'll  go  along  together 
fine." 

Mr.  Charles  Fitzherbert  assisted  no  more  at  rehearsals, 
but  occupied  himself  entirely  with  the  box-office.  Mr. 
Wade  Fortescue  was  very  fierce  about  2  A.M.  in  the  bar 
of  his  hotel,  but  very  mild  at  rehearsals.  Mr.  Marchmont 
Hearne  hibernated  during  this  period,  and  when  he  ap- 
peared very  shyly  at  the  opening  performance  in  Brooklyn 
the  company  greeted  him  with  the  surprised  cordiality 
that  is  displayed  to  some  one  who  has  broken  his  leg  and 
emerges  weeks  later  from  hospital  without  a  limp. 

New  York  made  a  deep  and  instant  impression  on 
Sylvia.  No  city  that  she  had  seen  was  so  uncompromis- 
ing; so  sure  of  its  flamboyant  personality;  so  completely 
an  ingenious,  spoiled,  and  precocious  child;  so  lovable  for 
its  extravagance  and  mischief.  To  her  the  impression  was 
of  some  Gargantuan  boy  in  his  nursery  building  up  tall 
towers  to  knock  them  down,  running  his  clockwork- 
engines  for  fun  through  the  streets  of  his  toy  city,  scatter- 
ing in  corners  quantities  of  toy  bricks  in  readiness  for  a 
new  fit  of  destructive  construction,  scooping  up  his  tin 
inhabitants  at  the  end  of  a  day's  play  to  put  them  helter- 
skelter  into  their  box,  eking  out  the  most  novel  electrical 
toys  of  that  Christmas  with  the  battered  old  trams  of  the 
Christmas  before,  cherishing  old  houses  with  a  child's  queer 
conservatism,  devoting  a  large  stretch  of  bright  carpet  to 
a  park,  and  robbing  his  grandmother's  mantelpiece  of  her 
treasures  to  put  inside  his  more  permanent  structures. 
After  seeing  New  York  she  sympathized  very  much  with 
the  remark  she  had  heard  made  by  a  young  New-Yorker 
on  board  the  Minneworra,  which  at  the  time  she  had 
thought  a  mere  callow  piece  of  rudeness. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  363 

A  grave  doctor  from  Toledo,  Ohio,  almost  as  grave  as  if 
he  were  from  the  original  Toledo,  had  expressed  a  hope  to 
Sylvia  that  she  would  not  accept  New  York  as  representa- 
tive of  the  United  States.  She  must  travel  to  the  West. 
New  York  had  no  family  life.  If  Miss  Scarlett  wished  to  see 
family  life,  he  should  be  glad  to  show  it  to  her  in  Toledo. 
For  confirmation  of  his  criticism  he  had  appealed  to  a 
young  man  standing  at  his  elbow. 

"Well,"  the  young  man  had  replied,  "I've  never  been 
fifty  miles  west  of  New  York  in  my  life,  and  I  hope  I  never 
shall.  When  I  want  to  travel  I  cross  over  to  Europe  for  a 
month." 

The  Toledo  doctor  had  afterward  spoken  severely  to 
Sylvia  on  the  subject  of  this  young  New-Yorker,  citing 
him  as  a  dangerous  element  in  the  national  welfare.  Now, 
after  seeing  the  Gargantuan  boy's  nursery,  she  understood 
the  spirit  that  wanted  to  enjoy  his  nursery  and  not  be 
bothered  to  go  for  polite  walks  with  maiden  aunts  in  the 
country;  equally,  no  doubt,  in  Toledo  she  should  appre- 
ciate the  point  of  view  of  the  doctor  and  recognize  the  need 
for  the  bone  that  would  support  the  vast  bulk  of  the  grow- 
ing child. 

Sylvia  had  noticed  that  as  she  grew  older  impressions 
became  less  vivid;  her  later  and  wider  experience  of  Lon- 
don was  already  dim  beside  those  first  years  with  her 
father  and  Monkley.  It  had  been  the  same  during  her 
travels.  Already  even  the  Alhambra  was  no  longer  quite 
clearly  imprinted  upon  her  mind,  and  each  year  it  had 
been  growing  less  and  less  easy  to  be  astonished.  But 
this  arrival  in  New  York  had  been  like  an  arrival  in  child- 
hood, as  surprising,  as  exciting,  as  terrifying,  as  stimu- 
lating. New  York  was  like  a  rejuvenating  potion  in  the 
magic  influence  of  which  the  memories  of  past  years  dis- 
solved. Partly,  no  doubt,  this  effect  might  be  ascribed  to 
the  invigorating  air,  and  partly,  Sylvia  thought,  to  the 
anxiously  receptive  condition  of  herself  now  within  sight 
of  thirty;  but  neither  of  these  explanations  was  wide 
enough  to  include  all  that  New  York  gave  of  regenerative 
emotion,  of  willingness  to  be  alive  and  unwillingness  to  go 
to  bed,  and  of  zest  in  being  amused.  Sylvia  had  supposed 
that  she  had  long  ago  outgrown  the  pleasure  of  wandering 


364  Sylvia    Scarlett 

about  streets  for  no  other  reason  than  to  be  wandering 
about  streets,  of  staring  into  shops,  of  staring  after  people, 
of  staring  at  advertisements,  of  staring  in  company  with  a 
crowd  of  starers  as  well  entertained  as  herself  at  a  bat  that 
was  flying  about  in  daylight  outside  the  Plaza  Hotel;  but 
here  in  New  York  all  that  old  youthful  attitude  of  assuming 
that  the  world  existed  for  one's  diversion,  mixed  with  a 
sharp,  though  always  essentially  contemptuous,  curiosity 
about  the  method  it  was  taking  to  amuse  one,  was  hers 
again.  Sylvia  had  always  regarded  England  as  the  frivo- 
lous nation  that  thought  of  nothing  but  amusement, 
England  that  took  its  pleasure  so  earnestly  and  its  business 
so  lightly.  In  New  York  there  was  no  question  of  qualify- 
ing adverbs;  everything  was  a  game.  It  was  a  game,  and 
apparently,  by  the  enthusiasm  with  which  it  was  played, 
a  novel  game,  to  control  the  traffic  in  Fifth  Avenue — a 
rather  dangerous  game  like  American  football,  in  which  at 
first  the  casualties  to  the  policemen  who  played  it  were 
considerable.  Street-mending  was  another  game,  rather 
an  elementary  game  that  contained  a  large  admixture  of 
practical  joking.  Getting  a  carriage  after  the  theater  was 
a  game  played  with  counters.  Eating,  even,  could  be 
made  into  a  game  either  mechanical  like  the  automatic 
dime  lunch,  or  intellectual  like  the  free  lunch,  or  imagina- 
tive like  the  quick  lunch. 

Sylvia  had  already  made  acquaintance  with  the  crude 
material  of  America  in  Carlos  Morera.  New  York  was 
Carlos  Morera  much  more  refined  and  more  matured, 
sweetened  by  its  own  civilization,  which,  having  severed 
itself  from  other  civilizations  like  the  Anglo-Saxon  or 
Latin,  was  already  most  convincingly  a  civilization  of  its 
own,  bearing  the  veritable  stamp  of  greatness.  Sometimes 
Sylvia  would  be  faced  even  in  New  York  by  a  childishness 
that  scarcely  differed  from  the  childishness  of  Carlos 
Morera.  One  evening,  for  instance,  two  of  the  men  in  the 
company  who  knew  her  tastes  invited  her  to  come  with 
them  to  Murden's  all-night  saloon  off  Sixth  Avenue. 
They  had  been  told  it  was  a  sight  worth  seeing.  Sylvia, 
with  visions  of  something  like  the  dancing-saloon  in 
Buenos  Aires,  was  anxious  to  make  the  experiment.  It 
sounded  exciting  when  she  heard  that  the  place  was  kept 


Sylvia    Scarlett  365 

going  by  "graft."  After  the  performance  she  and  her 
companions  went  to  Jack's  for  supper;  thence  they  walked 
along  Sixth  Avenue  to  Murden's.  It  was  only  about  two 
o'clock  when  they  entered  by  a  side  door  into  a  room 
exactly  like  the  bar  parlor  of  an  English  public  house, 
where  they  sat  rather  drearily  drinking  some  inferior  beer, 
until  one  of  Sylvia's  companions  suggested  that  they  had 
arrived  too  near  the  hours  of  legal  closing.  They  left  Mur- 
den's and  visited  a  Chinese  restaurant  in  Broadway  with  a 
cabaret  attached.  The  prices,  the  entertainment,  the 
food,  and  the  company  were  in  a  descending  scale;  the 
prices  were  much  the  highest.  Two  hours  later  they  went 
back  to  Murden's;  the  parlor  was  not  less  dreary;  the 
beer  was  still  abominable.  However,  just  as  they  had 
decided  that  this  could  not  be  the  right  place,  an  enormous 
man  slightly  drunk  entered  under  the  escort  of  two  ladies 
of  the  town.  Perceiving  that  Sylvia  and  her  companions 
had  risen,  the  new-comer  waved  them  back  into  their  chairs 
and  called  for  drinks  all  round. 

"British?"  he  asked. 

They  nodded. 

"Yes,  I  thought  you  were  Britishers.  I'm  Under- 
Sheriff  McMorris."  With  this  he  seated  himself,  hugging 
the  two  nymphs  on  either  side  of  him  like  a  Dionysius  in 
his  chariot. 

"Actor  folk?"  he  asked. 

They  nodded. 

"  Yes,  I  thought  you  were  actor  folk.  Ever  read  Shake- 
speare? Some  boy,  eh?  Gee!  I  used  to  be  able  to  spout 
Parsha  without  taking  breath." 

Forthwith  he  delivered  the  speech  about  the  quality  of 
mercy. 

"Wai?"  he  demanded  at  the  end. 

The  English  actors  congratulated  him  and  called  for 
another  round.  Mr.  McMorris  turned  to  one  of  the 
nymphs: 

"Wai,  honey?" 

"Cut  it  out,  you  fat  old  slob;  you're  tanked!"  said 
honey. 

Mr.  McMorris  recited  several  other  speeches,  including 
the  vision  of  the  dagger  from  "Macbeth."  From  Shake- 


366  Sylvia    Scarlett 

speare  he  passed  to  Longfellow,  and  from  Longfellow  to 
Byron.  After  an  hour  of  recitations  he  was  persuaded  by 
the  bartender  to  give  some  of  his  reminiscences  of  criminals 
in  New  York,  which  he  did  so  vividly  that  Sylvia  began  to 
suppose  that  at  one  time  or  another  he  really  had  been 
connected  with  the  law.  Finally  about  six  o'clock  be 
became  pathetic  and  wept  away  most  of  what  he  had 
drunk. 

"I'm  feeling  bad  this  morning.  I  gart  to  go  and  arrest 
a  man  for  whom  I  have  a  considerable  admiration.  I  gart 
to  go  down-town  to  Washington  Square  and  arrest  a 
prominent  citizen  at  eight  o'clock  sharp.  I  guess  they're 
waiting  right  now  for  me  to  come  along  and  make  that 
arrest.  Where's  my  black-jack?" 

He  fumbled  in  his  pocket  for  a  leather-covered  life- 
preserver,  which  he  flourished  truculently.  Leaning  upon 
the  shoulders  of  the  nymphs,  he  waved  a  farewell  and 
staggered  out. 

Sylvia  asked  the  bartender  what  he  really  was. 

"He's  Under-SherifF  McMorris.  At  eight  o'clock  he's 
going  to  arrest  a  prominent  New  York  citizen  for  mis- 
appropriation of  some  fund." 

That  evening  in  the  papers  Sylvia  read  that  Under- 
SherifF  McMorris  had  burst  into  tears  when  ex-Governor 
Somebody  or  other  had  walked  down  the  steps  of  his  house 
in  Washington  Square  and  offered  himself  to  the  custody 
of  the  law. 

"  I  don't  like  to  have  to  do  this,  Mr.  Governor,"  Under- 
SherifF  McMorris  had  protested. 

"You  must  do  your  duty,  Mr.  Under-SherifF." 

The  crowd  had  thereupon  cheered  loudly,  and  the  wife 
of  the  ex-Governor,  dissolved  in  tears,  had  waved  the 
Stars  and  Stripes  from  an  upper  window. 

"Jug  for  the  ex-Governor  and  a  jag  for  the  under- 
sherifF,"  said  Sylvia.  "If  only  the  same  spirit  could  be 
applied  to  minor  arrests.  That  may  come.  It's  wonder- 
ful, really,  how  in  this  mighty  republic  they  manage  to 
preserve  any  vestige  of  personality,  but  they  do." 

The  play  ran  through  the  autumn  and  went  on  tour  in 
January.  Sylvia  did  not  add  much  to  her  appreciation  of 
America  in  the  course  of  it,  because,  as  was  inevitable  in 


Sylvia    Scarlett  367 

the  short  visits  they  paid  to  various  towns,  she  had  to 
depend  for  intercourse  upon  the  members  of  the  company. 
She  reached  New  York  again  shortly  before  her  twenty- 
eighth  birthday.  When  nearly  all  her  fellow-players  re- 
turned to  England,  she  decided  to  stay  behind.  The  first 
impression  she  had  received  of  entering  upon  a  new  phase 
of  life  when  she  landed  in  New  York  had  not  yet  deserted 
her,  and  having  received  an  offer  from  the  owner  of  what 
sounded,  from  his  description,  like  a  kind  of  hydropathic 
establishment  to  entertain  the  visitors  there  during  the 
late  summer  and  fall,  she  accepted.  In  August,  therefore, 
she  left  New  York  and  went  to  Sulphurville,  Indiana. 

Sylvia  had  had  glimpses  of  rural  America  in  Vermont 
and  New  Hampshire  during  the  tour;  in  such  a  cursory 
view  it  had  not  seemed  to  differ  much  from  rural  England. 
Now  she  was  going  to  see  rustic  America,  if  a  distinction 
between  the  two  adjectives  might  be  made.  At  Indian- 
apolis she  changed  from  the  great  express  into  a  smaller 
train  that  deposited  her  at  a  railway  station  consisting  of  a 
tumble-down  shed.  Nobody  came  out  to  welcome  the 
train,  but  the  colored  porter  insisted  that  this  was  the 
junction  from  which  she  would  ultimately  reach  Sulphur- 
ville and  denied  firmly  Sylvia's  suggestion  that  the  engine- 
driver  had  stopped  here  for  breath.  She  was  the  only 
passenger  who  alighted,  and  she  saw  the  train  continue  on 
its  way  with  something  near  despair.  The  sun  was  blazing 
down.  All  around  was  a  grasshopper-haunted  wilderness 
of  Indian  corn.  It  was  the  hottest,  greenest,  flattest,  most 
God-forsaken  spot  she  had  ever  seen.  The  heat  was  so 
tremendous  that  she  ventured  inside  the  hut  for  shade. 
The  only  sign  of  life  was  a  bug  proceeding  slowly  across  a 
greasy  table.  Sylvia  went  out  and  wandered  round  to  the 
other  side.  Here,  fast  asleep,  was  a  man  dressed  in  a  pair 
of  blue  trousers,  a  neckerchief,  and  an  enormous  straw 
hat.  As  the  trousers  reached  to  his  armpits,  he  was  really 
fully  dressed,  and  Sylvia  was  able  to  recognize  him  as  a 
human  being  from  an  illustrated  edition  she  possessed  of 
Huckleberry  Finn;  at  the  same  time,  she  thought  it  wiser 
to  let  him  sleep  and  returned  to  the  front  of  the  shed.  To 
her  surprise,  for  it  seemed  scarcely  possible  that  anybody 
could  inhabit  the  second  floor,  she  perceived  a  woman  with 

24 


368  Sylvia    Scarlett 

curl-papers,  in  a  spotted  green-and-yellow  bed-wrapper, 
looking  out  of  what  until  now  she  had  supposed  to  be  a 
gap  in  the  roof  caused  by  decay.  Sylvia  asked  the  woman 
if  this  was  the  junction  for  Sulphurville.  She  nodded,  but 
vanished  from  the  window  before  there  was  time  to  ask 
her  when  the  train  would  arrive. 

Sylvia  waited  for  an  hour  in  the  heat,  and  had  almost 
given  up  hope  of  ever  reaching  Sulphurville  when  suddenly 
a  train  arrived,  even  smaller  than  the  one  into  which  she 
had  changed  at  Indianapolis,  but  still  considerably  larger 
than  any  European  train.  The  hot  afternoon  wore  away 
while  this  new  train  puffed  slowly  deeper  and  deeper  into 
rustic  America  until  it  reached  Bagdad.  Hitherto  Sylvia 
had  traveled  in  what  was  called  a  parlor-car,  but  at 
Bagdad  she  had  to  enter  a  fourth  train  that  did  not  possess 
a  parlor-car  and  that  really  resembled  a  local  train  in 
England,  with  oil-lamps  and  semi-detached  compartments. 
At  every  station  between  Bagdad  and  Sulphurville  crowds 
of  country  folk  got  in,  all  of  whom  were  wearing  flags  and 
flowers  in  their  buttonholes  and  were  in  a  state  of  per- 
spiring festivity.  At  the  last  station  before  Sulphurville 
the  train  was  invaded  by  the  members  of  a  local  band, 
whose  instruments  fought  for  a  place  as  hard  as  their 
masters.  Sylvia  was  nearly  elbowed  out  of  her  seat  by  an 
aggressive  ophicleide,  but  an  old  gentleman  opposite  with 
a  saxhorn  behind  him  and  a  euphonium  on  his  knees  told 
her  by  way  of  encouragement  that  the  soldiers  didn't  pass 
through  Indiana  every  day. 

"The  last  time  I  saw  soldiers  like  that  was  during  the 
war,"  he  said,  "and  I  don't  allow  any  of  us  here  will  ever 
see  so  many  soldiers  again."  He  looked  round  the  com- 
pany defiantly,  but  nobody  seemed  inclined  to  contradict 
him,  and  he  grunted  with  disappointment.  It  seemed  hard 
that  the  old  gentleman's  day  should  end  so  tamely,  but 
fortunately  a  young  man  in  the  far  corner  proclaimed' it 
not  merely  as  his  opinion,  but  supported  it  from  inside 
information,  that  the  regiment  was  being  marched 
through  Indiana  like  this  in  order  to  get  it  nearer  to  the 
Mexican  border. 

"Shucks!"  said  the  old  gentleman,  and  blew  his  nose  so 
violently  that  every  one  looked  involuntarily  at  one  of  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  369 

brass  instruments.  "Shucks!"  he  repeated.  Then  he 
smiled  at  Sylvia,  who,  sympathizing  with  the  happy  close 
of  his  day,  smiled  back  just  as  the  train  entered  the  station 
of  Sulphurville. 

The  Plutonian  Hotel,  Sulphurville,  had  presumably 
been  built  to  appease  the  same  kind  of  human  credulity 
that  created  the  pump-rooms  at  Bath  or  Wiesbaden  or 
Aix-les-Bains.  Sylvia  had  observed  that  one  of  the  great 
elemental  beliefs  of  the  human  race,  a  belief  lost  in  prime- 
val fog,  was  that  if  water  with  an  odd  taste  bubbled  out  of 
the  earth,  it  must  necessarily  possess  curative  qualities; 
if  it  bubbled  forth  without  a  nasty  enough  taste  to  justify 
the  foundation  of  a  spa,  it  was  analyzed  by  prominent 
chemists,  bottled,  and  sold  as  a  panacea  to  the  great 
encouragement  of  lonely  dyspeptics  with  nothing  else  to 
read  at  dinner.  In  the  Middle  Ages,  and  possibly  in  the 
classic  times  of  yEsculapius,  these  natural  springs  had 
fortified  the  spiritual  side  of  man;  in  late  days  they  served 
to  dilute  his  spirits.  The  natural  springs  at  Sulphurville 
fully  justified  the  erection  of  the  Plutonian  Hotel  and  the 
lowest  depths  of  mortal  credulity,  for  they  had  a  revolting 
smell,  an  exceptionally  unpleasant  taste,  and  a  high 
temperature.  Everything  that  balneal  ingenuity  could 
suggest  had  been  done,  and  in  case  the  internal 
cure  was  not  nasty  enough  as  it  was,  the  first  glass 
of  water  was  prescribed  for  six  o'clock  in  the  morning. 
Though  it  was  necessary  to  test  human  faith  by  the  most 
arduous  and  vexatious  ordinances  for  human  conduct,  lest 
it  might  grow  contemptuous  of  the  cure,  it  was  equally 
necessary  to  prevent  boredom,  if  not  of  the  devotees  them- 
selves, at  any  rate  of  their  families.  Accordingly,  there 
was  an  annex  of  the  ascetic  hotel  where  everybody  was 
driven  to  bed  at  eleven  by  the  uncomfortable  behavior  of 
the  servants,  and  where  breakfast  was  served  not  later 
than  seven;  this  annex  possessed  a  concert-hall,  a  small 
theater,  a  gaming-saloon  with  not  merely  roulette,  but 
many  apparently  childish  games  of  chance  that  neverthe- 
less richly  rewarded  the  management.  Sylvia  wondered  if 
there  was  any  moral  intention  on  the  part  of  the  proprie- 
tors in  the  way  they  encouraged  gambling,  if  they  wished  to 
accentuate  the  chances  and  changes  of  human  life  and 


370  Sylvia    Scarlett 

thereby  secure  for  their  clients  a  religious  attitude  toward 
their  bodily  safety.  Certainly  at  the  Plutonian  Hotel  it 
was  impossible  to  obtain  anything  except  meals  without 
gambling.  In  order  to  buy  a  cigar  or  a  box  of  chocolates  it 
was  necessary  to  play  dice  with  the  young  woman  who 
sold  them,  with  more  or  less  profit  to  the  hotel,  according 
to  one's  luck.  Every  morning  some  new  object  was  on 
view  in  the  lobby  to  be  raffled  that  evening.  Thus  on  the 
fourth  night  of  her  stay  Sylvia  became  the  owner  of  a  large 
trunk,  the  emptiness  of  which  was  continuous  temptation. 

The  Plutonian  was  not  merely  a  resort  for  gouty 
Easterners;  it  catered  equally  for  the  uric  acid  of  the 
West.  Sylvia  liked  the  families  from  the  West,  particu- 
larly the  girls  with  their  flowing  hair  and  big  felt  hats  who 
rode  on  Kentucky  ponies  to  see  smugglers'  caves  in  the 
hills,  conforming  invariably  to  the  traditional  aspect  of  the 
Western  belle  in  the  cinema.  The  boys  were  not  so 
picturesque;  in  fact,  they  scarcely  differed  from  European 
boys  of  the  same  age.  The  East  supplied  the  exotic  note 
among  the  children;  candy-fed,  shrill,  and  precocious  with 
a  queer  gnomelike  charm,  they  resembled  expensive  toys. 
These  visitors  to  Sulphurville  were  much  more  affable  with 
one  another  than  their  fellows  in  Europe  would  have  been 
in  similar  circumstances.  Sylvia  had  already  noticed  that 
in  America  stomachic  subjects  could  inspire  the  dullest 
conversation;  here  at  the  Plutonian  the  stomach  had 
taken  the  place  of  the  soul,  and  it  was  scarcely  an  exag- 
geration to  say  that  in  the  lounges  people  rose  up  to 
testify  in  public  about  their  insides. 

The  morning  after  Sylvia's  arrival  the  guests  were  much 
excited  by  the  visit  of  the  soldiers,  who  were  to  camp  for  a 
week  on  the  hotel  grounds  and  perform  various  maneu- 
vers. Sylvia  observed  that  everybody  talked  as  if  a  troupe 
of  acrobats  was  going  to  visit  the  hotel;  nobody  seemed  to 
have  any  idea  that  the  American  army  served  any  purpose 
but  the  entertainment  of  the  public  with  gymnastic  dis- 
plays. That  afternoon  the  regiment  marched  past  the 
hotel  to  its  camping-ground;  the  band  played  the  "Star- 
spangled  Banner";  all  the  visitors  grouped  upon  the  steps 
in  front  clapped  their  hands;  the  colonel  took  off  his  hat, 
waved  it  at  the  audience,  and  bowed  like  a  successful 


Sylvia    Scarlett  371 

author.  At  first  Sylvia  considered  his  behavior  undignified 
and  absurd;  afterward  she  rather  approved  of  its  friendli- 
ness, its  absence  of  pomp  and  arrogance,  its  essentially 
democratic  inspiration — in  a  word,  its  familiarity. 

The  proprietor  of  the  Plutonian,  a  leading  political 
"boss,"  was  so  much  moved  by  the  strains  of  the  music, 
the  martial  bearing  of  the  men,  and  the  opportunity  of  self- 
advertisement,  that  he  invited  the  officers  of  the  regiment 
to  mess  free  in  the  hotel  during  their  visit.  Everybody 
praised  Mr.  O'Halloran's  generosity  and  patriotism,  the 
more  warmly  because  it  gave  everybody  an  occasion  to 
commiserate  with  the  officers  upon  their  absurdly  small 
pay.  Such  commiseration  gratified  the  individual's  sense 
of  superiority  and  made  it  easy  for  him  to  brag  about  his 
own  success  in  life.  Sylvia  resented  the  business  man's 
point  of  view  about  his  national  army;  it  was  almost  as 
patronizing  as  an  Englishman's  attitude  to  an  artist  or  a 
German's  to  a  woman  or  a  Frenchman's  to  anybody  but  a 
Frenchman.  Snobbishness  was  only  tolerable  about  the 
past.  Perhaps  that  was  the  reason  why  the  Italians  were 
the  only  really  democratic  nation  she  had  met  so  far.  The 
Italians  were  aristocrats  trying  to  become  tradesmen;  the 
rest  of  mankind  were  tradesmen  striving  to  appear  aristo- 
crats. 

Sylvia  had  sung  her  songs  and  was  watching  the  rou- 
lette, when  a  young  lieutenant  who  had  been  playing  with 
great  seriousness  turned  to  her  and  asked  if  she  was  not 
British. 

"We  got  to  know  some  British  officers  out  in  China,"  he 
told  her.  "We  couldn't  seem  to  understand  them  at  first, 
but  afterward  we  found  out  they  were  good  boys,  really. 
Only  the  trouble  was  we  were  never  properly  introduced  at 
first,  and  that  worried  them  some.  Say,  there's  a  fellow- 
countryman  of  yours  sick  in  Sulphurville.  I  kind  of  found 
out  by  accident  this  morning,  because  I  went  into  a  drug- 
store and  the  storekeeper  was  handing  out  some  medicine 
to  a  colored  girl  who  was  arguing  with  him  whether  she 
should  pay  for  it.  Seems  this  young  Britisher's  expecting 
his  remittance.  That's  a  God-awful  place  to  be  stranded, 
Sulphurville." 

They  chatted  for  a  while  together.     Sylvia  liked  the 


372  Sylvia    Scarlett 

simple  good-fellowship  of  the  young  American,  his  inquisi- 
tiveness  about  her  reasons  for  coming  to  sing  at  the  Plu- 
tonian Hotel,  and  his  frank  anticipation  of  any  curiosity 
on  her  side  by  telling  her  all  about  himself  and  his  career 
since  he  left  West  Point.  He  was  amused  by  her  account 
of  the  excitement  over  the  passage  of  the  troops  through 
the  villages,  and  seized  the  occasion  to  moralize  on  the 
vastness  of  a  country  through  one  state  of  which  a  regi- 
ment could  march  and  surprise  half  the  inhabitants  with 
their  first  view  of  an  American  soldier. 

"Seems  kind  of  queer,"  he  said. 

"But  very  Arcadian,"  Sylvia  added. 

When  Sylvia  went  to  bed  her  mind  reverted  to  the  young 
Englishman;  at  the  time  she  had  scarcely  taken  in  the 
significance  of  what  the  officer  had  told  her.  Now  sud- 
denly the  sense  of  his  loneliness  and  suffering  overwhelmed 
her  fancy.  She  thought  of  the  desolation  of  that  railway 
junction  where  she  had  waited  for  the  train  to  Sulphur- 
ville,  of  the  heat  and  the  grasshoppers  and  the  flat,  endless 
greenery.  Even  that  brief  experience  of  being  alone  in  the 
heart  of  America  had  frightened  her.  She  had  not  taken 
heed  of  the  vastness  of  it  while  she  was  traveling  with  the 
company,  and  here  at  the  hotel  definitely  placed  as  an 
entertainer  she  had  a  certain  security.  But  to  be  alone 
and  penniless  in  Sulphurville,  to  be  ill,  moreover,  and 
dependent  on  the  charity  of  foreigners,  so  much  the  more 
foreign  because,  though  they  spoke  the  same  language, 
they  spoke  it  with  strange  differences  like  the  people  in  a 
dream.  The  words  were  the  same,  but  they  expressed 
foreign  ideas.  Sylvia  began  to  speculate  upon  the  causes 
that  had  led  to  this  young  Englishman's  being  stranded  in 
Sulphurville.  There  seemed  no  explanation,  unless  he 
were  perhaps  an  actor  who  had  been  abandoned  because 
he  was  too  ill  to  travel  with  the  company.  At  this  idea 
she  almost  got  out  of  bed  to  walk  through  the  warm  frog- 
haunted  night  to  his  rescue.  She  became  sentimental 
about  him  in  the  dark.  It  seemed  to  her  that  nothing  in 
the  world  was  so  pitiable  as  a  sick  artist;  always  the 
servant  of  the  public's  curiosity,  he  was  now  the  helpless 
prey  of  it.  He  would  be  treated  with  the  contempt  that  is 
accorded  to  sick  animals  whose  utility  is  at  an  end.  She 


Sylvia    Scarlett  373 

visualized  him  in  the  care  of  a  woman  like  the  one  who 
had  leaned  out  of  that  railway  shed  in  a  spotted  green-and- 
yellow  wrapper.  Yet,  after  all,  he  might  not  be  a  mounte- 
bank; there  was  really  no  reason  to  suppose  he  was  any- 
thing but  poor  and  lonely,  though  that  was  enough  indeed. 
"I  must  be  getting  very  old,"  Sylvia  said  to  herself. 
"Only  approaching  senility  could  excuse  this  prodigal 
effusion  of  what  is  really  almost  maternal  lust.  I've  grown 
out  of  any  inclination  to  ask  myself  why  I  think  things  or 
why  I  do  things.  I've  nothing  now  but  an  immense  desire 
to  do — do — do.  I  was  beginning  to  think  this  desperate 
determination  to  be  impressed,  like  a  child  whose  father  is 
hiding  conspicuously  behind  the  door,  was  due  to  America. 
It's  nothing  to  do  with  America;  it's  myself.  It's  a  kind 
of  moral  and  mental  drunkenness.  I  know  what  I'm 
doing.  I'm  entirely  responsible  for  my  actions.  That's  the 
way  a  drunken  man  argues.  Nobody  is  so  utterly  con- 
vinced of  his  rightness  and  reasonableness  and  judgment 
as  a  drunken  man.  I  might  argue  with  myself  till  morning 
that  it's  ridiculous  to  excite  myself  over  the  prospect  of 
helping  an  Englishman  stranded  in  Sulphurville,  but  when, 
worn  out  with  self-conviction,  I  fall  asleep,  I  shall  wake  on 
tiptoe,  as  it  were.  I  shall  be  quite  violently  awake  at 
once.  The  fact  is  I'm  absolutely  tired  of  observing  human 
nature.  I  just  want  to  tumble  right  into  the  middle  of  its 
confusion  and  forget  how  to  criticize  anybody  or  anything. 
What's  the  good  of  meeting  a  drunken  man  with  generali- 
zations about  human  conduct  or  direction  or  progression? 
He  won't  listen  to  generalizations,  because  drunkenness  is 
the  apotheosis  of  the  individual.  That's  why  drunken 
people  are  always  so  earnestly  persuasive,  so  anxious  to 
convince  the  unintoxicated  observer  that  it  is  better  to 
walk  on  all-fours  than  upright.  Eccentricity  becomes  a 
moral  passion;  every  drunken  man  is  a  missionary  of  the 
peculiar.  At  the  present  moment  I'm  in  the  mental  state 
that,  did  I  possess  an  honest  taste  for  liquor,  would  make 
me  get  up  and  uncork  the  brandy-bottle.  It's  a  kind  of 
defiant  self-expression.  Oh,  that  poor  young  Englishman 
lying  alone  in  Sulphurville!  To-morrow,  to-morrow! 
Who  knows?  Perhaps  I  really  shall  find  that  I  am  neces- 
sary to  somebody.  Even  as  a  child  I  conceived  the  notion 


374  Sylvia    Scarlett 

of  being  indispensable.  I  want  somebody  to  say  to  me: 
'You!  You!  What  should  I  have  done  without  you?' 
I  suppose  every  woman  feels  that;  I  suppose  that  is  the 
maternal  instinct.  But  I  don't  believe  many  women  can 
feel  it  so  sharply  as  I  do,  because  very  few  women  have 
ever  been  compelled  by  circumstances  to  develop  their 
personalities  so  early  and  so  fully,  and  then  find  that  no- 
body wants  that  personality.  I  could  cry  just  at  the  mere 
notion  of  being  wanted,  and  surely  this  young  Englishman, 
whoever  he  is,  will  want  me.  Oh,  Sylvia,  Sylvia,  you're 
deliberately  working  yourself  up  to  an  adventure!  And 
who  has  a  better  right?  Tell  me  that.  That's  exactly 
why  I  praised  the  drunkard;  he  knows  how  to  dodge  self- 
consciousness.  Why  shouldn't  you  set  out  to  have  an 
adventure?  You  shall,  my  dear.  And  if  you're  disap- 
pointed ?  You've  been  disappointed  before.  Damn  those 
tree-frogs !  Like  all  croakers,  they  disturb  oblivion.  I  won- 
der if  he'd  like  my  new  trunk.  And  I  wonder  how  old  he  is. 
I'm  assuming  that  he's  young,  but  he  may  be  a  matted  old 
tramp." 

Sylvia  woke  next  morning,  as  she  had  prefigured  herself, 
on  tiptoe;  at  breakfast  she  was  sorry  for  all  the  noisy 
people  round  her,  so  important  to  her  was  life  seeming. 
She  set  out  immediately  afterward  to  walk  along  the  hot, 
dusty  road  to  the  town,  elated  by  the  notion  of  leaving 
behind  her  the  restlessness  and  stark  cleanliness  of  the  big 
hotel.  The  main  street  of  Sulphurville  smelled  of  straw 
and  dry  grain;  and  if  it  had  not  been  for  the  flies  she  would 
have  found  the  air  sweet  enough  after  the  damp  exhala- 
tions of  brimstone  that  permeated  the  atmosphere  of  the 
Plutonian  and  its  surroundings.  The  flies,  however, 
tainted  everything;  not  even  the  drug-store  was  free  from 
them.  Sylvia  inquired  for  the  address  of  the  Englishman, 
and  the  druggist  looked  at  her  sharply.  She  wondered  if 
he  was  hoping  for  the  settlement  of  his  account. 

"  Madden' s  the  name,  ain't  it?"  the  druggist  asked. 

"Madden,"  she  repeated,  mechanically.  A  wave  of 
emotion  flooded  her  mind,  receded,  and  left  it  strewn  with 
the  jetsam  of  the  past.  The  druggist  and  the  drug-store 
faded  out  of  her  consciousness;  she  was  in  Colonial  Terrace 
again,  insisting  upon  Arthur's  immediate  departure. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  375 

"What  a  little  beast  I  was!"  she  thought,  and  a  desire 
came  over  her  to  atone  for  former  heartlessness  by  her 
present  behavior.  Then  abruptly  she  realized  that  the 
Madden  of  Sulphurville  was  not  necessarily,  or  even 
probably,  the  Arthur  Madden  of  Hampstead.  Yet  behind 
this  half-disappointment  lay  the  conviction  that  it  was  he. 
"Which  accounts  for  my  unusual  excitement,"  Sylvia 
murmured.  She  heard  herself  calmly  asking  the  store- 
keeper for  his  address. 

"The  Auburn  Hotel,"  she  repeated.    "Thank  you." 

The  storekeeper  seemed  inclined  to  question  her  further; 
no  doubt  he  wished  to  be  able  to  count  upon  his  bill's  being 
paid;  but  Sylvia  hurried  from  the  shop  before  he  could 
speak. 

The  Auburn  Hotel,  Sulphurville,  was  perhaps  not  worse 
than  a  hotel  of  the  same  class  would  have  been  in  England, 
but  the  colored  servant  added  just  enough  to  the  prevail- 
ing squalor  to  make  it  seem  worse.  When  Sylvia  asked  to 
see  Mr.  Madden  the  colored  servant  stared  at  her,  wiped 
her  mouth  with  her  apron,  and  called: 

"Mrs.  Lebus!" 

"Oh,  Julie,  is  that  you  ?  What  is  it  you  want  ?"  twanged 
a  voice  from  within  that  sounded  like  a  cat  caught  in  a 
guitar. 

"You're  wanted  right  now,  Mrs.  Lebus,"  the  servant 
called  back. 

The  duet  was  like  a  parody  of  a  'coon  song,  and  Sylvia 
found  herself  humming  to  ragtime: 

"Oh,  Mrs.  Lebus,  you're  wanted, 

Oh  yes,  you're  wanted,  sure  you're  wanted,  Mrs.  Lebus, 
You're  wanted,  you're  wanted, 
You're  wanted — right  now." 

Mrs.  Lebus  was  one  of  those  women  whose  tongues  are 
always  hunting,  like  eager  terriers.  With  evident  reluc- 
tance she  postponed  the  chase  of  an  artful  morsel  that  had 
taken  refuge  in  some  difficult  country  at  the  back  of  her 
mouth,  and  faced  the  problem  of  admitting  Sylvia  to  the 
sick  man's  room. 

"You  a  relative?"  she  asked. 

Sylvia  shook  her  head. 


376  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Perhaps  you've  come  about  his  remittance.  He  told 
me  he  was  expecting  a  hundred  dollars  any  time.  You 
staying  in  Sulphurville?" 

Sylvia  understood  that  the  apparent  disinclination  to 
admit  her  was  only  due  to  unsatisfied  curiosity  and  that 
there  was  not  necessarily  any  suspicion  of  her  motives.  At 
this  moment  something  particularly  delicious  ran  across 
the  path  of  Mrs.  Lebus's  tongue,  and  Sylvia  took  advan- 
tage of  the  brief  pause  during  which  it  was  devoured,  to 
penetrate  into  the  lobby,  where  a  melancholy  citizen  in  a 
frock-coat  and  a  straw  hat  was  testing  the  point  of  a  nib 
upon  his  thumb,  whether  with  the  intention  of  offering  it 
to  Mrs.  Lebus  to  pick  her  teeth  or  of  writing  a  letter  was 
uncertain. 

"Oh,  Scipio!"  said  Mrs.  Lebus.  She  pronounced  it 
"Skipio." 

"Wai?" 

"She  wants  to  see  Mr.  Madden." 

"Sure." 

The  landlady  turned  to  Sylvia. 

"Mr.  Lebus  don't  have  no  objections.  Julie,  take  Miss — 
What  did  you  say  your  name  was?" 

Sylvia  saw  no  reason  against  falling  into  what  Mrs. 
Lebus  evidently  considered  was  a  skilfully  laid  trap,  and 
told  her. 

"Scarlett,"  Mr.  Lebus  repeated.  "We  don't  possess 
that  name  in  Sulphurville.  Yes,  ma'am,  that  name's  noo 
to  Sulphurville." 

"Sakes  alive,  Scipio,  are  you  going  to  keep  Miss  Scarlett 
hanging  around  all  day  whiles  you  gossip  about  Sulphur- 
ville ?"  his  wife  asked.  Aware  of  her  husband's  enthusiasm 
for  his  native  place,  she  may  have  foreseen  a  dissertation 
upon  its  wonders  unless  she  were  ruthless. 

"Julie  '11  take  you  up  to  his  apartment.  And  don't  you 
forget  to  knock  before  you  open  the  door,  Julie." 

On  the  way  up-stairs  in  the  wake  of  the  servant,  Sylvia 
wondered  how  she  should  explain  her  intrusion  to  a 
stranger,  even  though  he  were  an  Englishman.  She  had  so 
firmly  decided  to  herself  it  was  Arthur  that  she  could  not 
make  any  plans  for  meeting  anybody  else.  Julie  was  quite 
ready  to  open  the  door  of  the  bedroom  and  let  Sylvia  enter 


Sylvia    Scarlett  377 

unannounced;  she  was  surprised  by  being  requested  to  go 
in  first  and  ask  the  gentleman  if  he  could  receive  Miss 
Scarlett.  However,  she  yielded  to  foreign  eccentricity, 
and  a  moment  later  ushered  Sylvia  in. 

It  was  Arthur  Madden;  and  Sylvia,  from  a  mixture  of 
penitence  for  the  way  she  treated  him  at  Colonial  Terrace, 
of  self-congratulation  for  being  so  sure  beforehand  that  it 
was  he,  and  from  swift  compassion  for  his  illness  and 
loneliness,  ran  across  the  room  and  greeted  him  with 
a  kiss. 

"How  on  earth  did  you  get  into  this  horrible  hole?'* 
Arthur  asked. 

"My  dear,  I  knew  it  was  you  when  I  heard  your  name." 
Breathlessly  she  poured  out  the  story  of  how  she  had 
found  him. 

"But  you'd  made  up  your  mind  to  play  the  Good 
Samaritan  to  whoever  it  was — you  never  guessed  for  a 
moment  at  first  that  it  was  me." 

She  forgave  him  the  faint  petulance  because  he  was  ill, 
and  also  because  it  brought  back  to  her  with  a  new  vivid- 
ness long  bygone  jealousies,  restoring  a  little  more  of  her- 
self as  she  once  was,  nearly  thirteen  years  ago.  How  little 
he  had  changed  outwardly,  and  much  of  what  change 
there  was  might  be  put  down  to  his  illness. 

"Arthur,  do  you  remember  Maria?"  she  asked. 

He  smiled.  "He  died  only  about  two  years  ago.  He 
lived  with  my  mother  after  I  went  on  the  stage." 

Sylvia  wondered  to  him  why  they  had  never  met  all 
these  years.  She  had  known  so  many  people  on  the  stage, 
but  then,  of  course,  she  had  been  a  good  deal  out  of  Eng- 
land. What  had  made  Arthur  go  on  the  stage  first?  He 
had  never  talked  of  it  in  the  old  days. 

"I  used  always  to  be  keen  on  music." 

Sylvia  whistled  the  melody  that  introduced  them  to 
each  other,  and  he  smiled  again. 

"My  mother  still  plays  that  sometimes,  and  I've  often 
thought  of  you  when  she  does.  She  lives  at  Dulwich  now.'* 

They  talked  for  a  while  of  Hampstead  and  laughed  over 
the  escape. 

"You  were  a  most  extraordinary  kid,"  he  told  her. 
"Because,  after  all,  I  was  seventeen  at  the  time — older 


378  Sylvia    Scarlett 

than  you.  Good  Lord !  I'm  thirty  now,  and  you  must  be 
twenty-eight!" 

To  Sylvia  it  was  much  more  incredible  that  he  should  be 
thirty;  he  seemed  so  much  younger  than  she,  lying  here  in 
this  frowsy  room,  or  was  it  that  she  felt  so  much  older 
than  he? 

"But  how  on  earth  did  you  get  stranded  in  this  place?" 
she  asked. 

"I  was  touring  with  a  concert  party.  The  last  few  years 
I've  practically  given  up  the  stage  proper.  I  don't  know 
why,  really,  for  I  was  doing  quite  decently,  but  concert- 
work  was  more  amusing,  somehow.  One  wasn't  so  much 
at  the  beck  and  call  of  managers." 

Sylvia  knew,  by  the  careful  way  in  which  he  was  giving 
his  reasons  for  abandoning  the  stage,  that  he  had  not  yet 
produced  the  real  reason.  It  might  have  been  baffled 
ambition  or  it  might  have  been  a  woman. 

"Well,  we  came  to  Sulphurville,"  said  Arthur.  He 
hesitated  for  a  moment.  Obviously  there  had  been  a 
woman.  "We  came  to  Sulphurville,"  he  went  on,  "and 
played  at  the  hotel  you're  playing  at  now — a  rotten  hole," 
he  added,  with  retrospective  bitterness.  "I  don't  know 
how  it  was,  but  I  suppose  I  got  keen  on  the  gambling — 
anyway,  I  had  a  row  with  the  other  people  in  the  show, 
and  when  they  left  I  refused  to  go  with  them.  I  stayed 
behind  and  got  keen  on  the  gambling." 

"  It  was  after  the  row  that  you  took  to  roulette  ?"  Sylvia 
asked. 

"Well,  as  a  matter  if  fact,  I  had  a  row  with  a  girl.  She 
treated  me  rather  badly,  and  I  stayed  on.  I  lost  a  good 
deal  of  money.  Well,  it  wasn't  a  very  large  sum,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  but  it  was  all  I  had,  and  then  I  fell  ill. 
I  caught  cold  and  I  was  worried  over  things.  I  cabled  to 
my  mother  for  some  money,  but  there's  been  no  reply. 
I'm  afraid  she's  had  difficulty  in  raising  it.  She  quarreled 
with  my  father's  people  when  I  went  on  the  stage. 
Damned  narrow-minded  set  of  yokels.  Furious  because  I 
wouldn't  take  up  farming.  How  I  hate  narrow-minded 
people!"  And  with  an  invalid's  fretful  intolerance  he 
went  on  grumbling  at  the  ineradicable  characteristics  of  an 
English  family  four  thousand  miles  away. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  379 

"Of  course  something  may  have  happened  to  my 
mother,"  he  added.  "You  may  be  sure  that  if  anything 
had  those  beasts  would  never  take  the  trouble  to  write  and 
tell  me.  It  would  be  a  pleasure  to  them  if  they  could 
annoy  me  in  any  way." 

A  swift  criticism  of  Arthur's  attitude  toward  the  possi- 
bility of  his  mother's  death  rose  to  Sylvia's  mind,  but  she 
repressed  it,  pleading  with  herself  to  excuse  him  because  he 
was  ill  and  overstrained.  She  was  positively  determined 
to  see  henceforth  nothing  but  good  in  people,  and  in  her 
anxiety  to  confirm  herself  in  this  resolve  she  was  ready  not 
merely  to  exaggerate  everything  in  Arthur's  favor,  but 
even  to  twist  any  failure  on  his  side  into  actual  merit. 
Thus  when  she  hastened  to  put  her  own  resources  at  his 
disposal,  and  found  him  quite  ready  to  accept  without 
protest  her  help,  she  choked  back  the  comparison  with 
Jack  Airdale's  attitude  in  similar  circumstances,  and  was 
quite  angry  with  herself,  saying  how  much  more  naturally 
Arthur  had  received  her  good-will  and  how  splendid  it  was 
to  find  such  simplicity  and  sincerity. 

"I'll  nurse  you  till  you're  quite  well,  and  then  why 
shouldn't  we  take  an  engagement  together  somewhere?" 

Arthur  became  enthusiastic  over  this  suggestion. 

"You've  not  heard  me  sing  yet.  My  throat's  still  too 
weak,  but  you'll  be  surprised,  Sylvia." 

"I  haven't  got  anything  but  a  very  deep  voice,"  she 
told  him.  "But  I  can  usually  make  an  impression." 

"  Can  you  ?  Of  course,  where  I've  always  been  held  back 
is  by  lack  of  money.  I've  never  been  able  to  afford  to  buy 
good  songs." 

Arthur  began  to  sketch  out  for  himself  a  most  radiant 
future,  and  as  he  talked  Sylvia  thought  again  how  in- 
credible it  was  that  he  should  be  older  than  herself.  Yet 
was  not  this  youthful  enthusiasm  exactly  what  she  re- 
quired? It  was  just  the  capacity  of  Arthur's  for  thinking 
he  had  a  future  that  was  going  to  make  life  tremendously 
worth  while  for  her,  tremendously  interesting — oh,  it  was 
impossible  not  to  believe  in  the  decrees  of  fate,  when  at  the 
very  moment  of  her  greatest  longing  to  be  needed  by  some- 
body she  had  met  Arthur  again.  She  could  be  everything 
to  him,  tend  him  through  his  illness,  provide  him  with 


380  Sylvia    Scarlett 

money  to  rid  himself  of  the  charity  of  Mrs.  Lebus  and  the 
druggist,  help  him  in  his  career,  and  watch  over  his  fidelity 
to  his  ambition.  She  remembered  how,  years  ago  at 
Hampstead,  his  mother  had  watched  over  him;  she  could 
recall  every  detail  of  the  room  and  see  Mrs.  Madden  inter- 
rupt one  of  her  long  sonatas  to  be  sure  Arthur  was  not 
sitting  in  a  draught.  And  it  had  been  she  who  had  heed- 
lessly lured  him  away  from  that  tender  mother.  There  was 
poetic  justice  in  this  opportunity  of  reparation  now  ac- 
corded to  her.  To  be  sure,  it  had  been  nothing  but  a 
childish  escapade — reparation  was  too  strong  a  word; 
but  there  was  something  so  neat  about  this  encounter 
years  afterward  in  a  place  like  Sulphurville.  How  pale  he 
was,  which,  nevertheless,  made  him  more  romantic  to  look 
at;  how  thin  and  white  his  hands  were!  She  took  one  of 
them  in  her  own  boy's  hands,  as  so  many  people  had  called 
them,  and  clasped  it  with  the  affection  that  one  gives  to 
small  helpless  things,  to  children  and  kittens,  an  affection 
that  is  half  gratitude  because  one  feels  good-will  rising  like 
a  sweet  fountain  from  the  depth  of  one's  being,  the  fresh- 
ness of  which  playing  upon  the  spirit  is  so  dear,  that  no 
words  are  enough  to  bless  the  wand  that  made  the  stream 
gush  forth. 

"I  shall  come  and  see  you  all  day,"  said  Sylvia.  "But  I 
think  I  ought  not  to  break  my  contract  at  the  Plutonian." 

"Oh,  you'll  come  and  live  here,"  Arthur  begged. 
"You've  no  idea  how  horrible  it  is.  There  was  a  cock- 
roach in  the  soup  last  night,  and  of  course  there  are  bugs. 
For  goodness'  sake,  Sylvia,  don't  give  me  hope  and  then 
dash  it  away  from  me.  I  tell  you  I've  had  a  hell  of  a  time 
in  this  cursed  hole.  Listen  to  the  bed;  it  sounds  as  if  it 
would  collapse  at  any  moment.  And  the  bugs  have  got  on 
my  nerves  to  such  a  pitch  that  I  spend  the  whole  time 
looking  at  spots  on  the  ceiling  and  fancying  they've  moved. 
It's  so  hot,  too;  everything's  rotted  with  heat.  You 
mustn't  desert  me.  You  must  come  and  stay  here  with  me." 

"Why  shouldn't  you  move  up  to  the  Plutonian?"  Sylvia 
suggested.  "I'll  tell  you  what  I'll  do.  I'll  get  one  of  the 
doctors  to  come  and  look  at  you,  and  if  he  thinks  it's 
possible  you  shall  move  up  there  at  once.  Poor  boy,  it 
really  is  too  ghastly  here." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  381 

Arthur  was  nearly  weeping  with  self-pity. 

"But,  my  dear  girl,  it's  much  worse  than  you  think. 
You  know  those  horrible  birds'  bath-tubs  in  which  they 
bring  your  food  at  third-rate  American  hotels,  loathsome 
saucers  with  squash  and  bits  of  grit  in  watery  milk  that 
they  call  cereals,  and  bony  bits  of  chicken,  well,  imagine 
being  fed  like  that  when  you're  ill;  imagine  your  bed 
covered  with  those  infernal  saucers.  One  of  them  always 
used  to  get  left  behind  when  Julie  cleared  away,  and  it 
always  used  to  fall  with  a  crash  on  the  floor,  and  I  used  to 
wonder  if  the  mess  would  tempt  the  cockroaches  into  my 
room.  And  then  Lebus  used  to  come  up  and  make  noises 
in  his  throat  and  brag  about  Sulphurville,  and  I  used  to 
know  by  his  wandering  eye  that  he  was  looking  for  what  he 
called  the  cuspidor,  which  I'd  put  out  of  sight.  And  Mrs. 
Lebus  used  to  come  up  and  suck  her  teeth  at  me  until  I  felt 
inclined  to  strangle  her." 

"The  sooner  you're  moved  away  the  better,"  Sylvia 
said,  decidedly. 

"Oh  yes,  if  you  think  it  can  be  managed.  But  if  not, 
Sylvia,  for  God's  sake  don't  leave  me  alone." 

"Are  you  really  glad  to  see  me?"  she  asked. 

"Oh,  my  dear,  it  was  like  heaven  opening  before  one's 
eyes!" 

"Tell  me  about  the  girl  you  were  fond  of,"  she  said, 
abruptly. 

"What  do  you  want  to  talk  about  her  for?  There's 
nothing  to  tell  you,  really.  She  had  red  hair." 

Sylvia  was  glad  that  Arthur  spoke  of  her  with  so  little 
interest;  it  certainly  was  definitely  comforting  to  feel  the 
utter  dispossession  of  that  red-haired  girl. 

"Look  here,"  said  Sylvia.  "I'm  going  to  let  these 
people  suppose  that  I'm  your  long-lost  relative.  I  shall 
pay  their  bill  and  bring  the  doctor  down  to  see  you. 
Arthur,  I'm  glad  I've  found  you.  Do  you  remember 
the  cab-horse?  Oh,  and  do  you  remember  the  cats  in 
the  area  and  the  jug  of  water  that  splashed  you?  You 
were  so  unhappy,  almost  as  unhappy  as  you  were  when 
I  found  you  here.  Have  you  always  been  treated  un- 
kindly?" 

"I  have  had  a  pretty  hard  time,"  Arthur  said. 


382  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Oh,  but  you  mustn't  be  sorry  for  yourself,"  she 
laughed. 

"No,  seriously,  Sylvia,  I've  always  had  a  lot  of  people 
against  me." 

"Yes,  but  that's  such  fun.  You  simply  must  be  amused 
by  life  when  you're  with  me.  I'm  not  hard-hearted  a  bit, 
really,  but  you  mustn't  be  offended  with  me  when  I  tell 
you  that  really  there's  something  a  tiny  bit  funny  in  your 
being  stranded  in  the  Auburn  Hotel,  Sulphurville." 

"I'm  glad  you  think  so,"  said  Arthur,  in  rather  a  hurt 
tone  of  voice. 

"Don't  be  cross,  you  foolish  creature." 

"I'm  not  a  bit  cross.  Only  I  would  like  you  to  under- 
stand that  my  illness  isn't  a  joke.  You  don't  suppose  I 
should  let  you  pay  my  bills  and  do  all  this  for  me  unless  it 
were  really  something  serious." 

Sylvia  put  her  hand  on  his  mouth.  "I  forgive  you," 
she  murmured,  "because  you  really  are  ill.  Oh,  Arthur, 
do  you  remember  Hube?  What  fun  everything  is!" 

Sylvia  left  him  and  went  down-stairs  to  arrange  matters 
with  Mrs.  Lebus. 

"It  was  a  relation,  after  all,"  she  told  her.  "The 
Maddens  have  been  related  to  us  for  hundreds  of  years." 

"My!    My!    Now  ain't  that  real  queer?    Oh,  Scipio!" 

Mr.  Lebus  came  into  view  cleaning  his  nails  with  the 
same  pen,  and  was  duly  impressed  with  the  coincidence. 

"Darned  if  I  don't  tell  Pastor  Gollick  after  next  Sunday 
meeting.  He's  got  a  kind  of  hankering  after  the  ways  of 
Providence.  Gee!  Why,  it's  a  sermonizing  cinch." 

There  was  general  satisfaction  in  the  Auburn  Hotel  over 
the  payment  of  Arthur's  bill. 

"Not  that  I  wouldn't  have  trusted  him  for  another 
month  and  more,"  Mrs.  Lebus  affirmed.  "But  it's  a 
satisfaction  to  be  able  to  turn  round  and  say  to  the  neigh- 
bors, 'What  did  I  tell  you?'  Folks  in  Sulphurville  was 
quite  sure  I'd  never  be  paid  back  a  cent.  This  '11  learn 
them!" 

Mr.  Lebus,  in  whose  throat  the  doubts  of  the  neighbors 
had  gathered  to  offend  his  faith,  cleared  them  out  forever 
in  one  sonorous  rauque. 

The  druggist's  account  was  settled,  and  though,  when 


Sylvia    Scarlett  383 

Sylvia  first  heard  him,  he  had  been  doubtful  if  his  medi- 
cine was  doing  the  patient  any  good,  he  was  now  most 
anxious  that  he  should  continue  with  the  prescription. 
That  afternoon  one  of  the  doctors  in  residence  at  the 
Plutonian  visited  Arthur  and  at  once  advised  his  removal 
thither. 

Arthur  made  rapid  progress  when  he  was  once  out  of 
the  hospitable  squalor  of  the  Auburn  Hotel,  and  the  story  of 
Sylvia's  discovery  of  her  unfortunate  cousin  became  a 
romantic  episode  for  all  the  guests  of  the  Plutonian,  a 
never-failing  aid  to  conversation  between  wives  waiting  for 
their  husbands  to  emerge  from  their  daily  torture  at  the 
hands  of  the  masseurs,  who  lived  like  imps  in  the  sulphur- 
ous glooms  of  the  bath  below;  maybe  it  even  provided  the 
victims  themselves  with  a  sufficiently  absorbing  topic  to 
mitigate  the  penalties  of  their  cure. 

Arthur  himself  expanded  wonderfully  as  the  subject  of 
so  much  discussion.  It  gave  Sylvia  the  greatest  pleasure  to 
see  the  way  in  which  his  complexion  was  recovering  its  old 
ruddiness  and  his  steps  their  former  vigor;  but  she  did 
not  approve  of  the  way  in  which  the  story  kept  pace  with 
Arthur's  expansion.  She  confided  to  him  how  very 
personally  the  news  of  the  sick  Englishman  had  affected 
her  and  how  she  had  made  up  her  mind  from  the  beginning 
that  it  was  a  stranded  actor,  and  afterward,  when  she  heard 
in  the  drug-store  the  name  Madden,  that  it  actually  was 
Arthur  himself.  He,  however,  was  unable  to  stay  content 
with  such  an  incomplete  telepathy;  indulging  human 
nature's  preference  for  what  is  not  true,  both  in  his  own 
capacity  as  a  liar  and  in  his  listeners'  avid  and  wanton 
credulity,  he  transferred  a  woman's  intimate  hopes  into  a 
quack's  tale. 

"Then  you  didn't  see  your  cousin's  spirit  go  up  in  the 
elevator  when  you  were  standing  in  the  lobby?  Now  isn't 
that  perfectly  discouraging?"  complained  a  lady  with  an 
astral  reputation  in  Illinois. 

"I'm  afraid  the  story's  been  added  to  a  good  deal," 
Sylvia  said.  "I'm  sorry  to  disappoint  the  faithful." 

"She's  shy  about  giving  us  her  experiences,"  said  an- 
other lady  from  Iowa.  "I  know  I  was  just  thrilled  when 
I  heard  it.  It  seemed  to  me  the  most  wonderful  story  I'd 

25 


384  Sylvia    Scarlett 

ever  imagined.  I  guess  you  felt  kind  of  queer  when  you 
saw  him  lying  on  a  bed  in  your  room." 

"He  was  in  his  own  room/'  Sylvia  corrected,  "and  I 
didn't  feel  at  all  queer.  It  was  he  who  felt  queer." 

"Isn't  she  secretive?"  exclaimed  the  lady  from  Illinois. 
"Why,  I  was  going  to  ask  you  to  write  it  up  in  our  society's 
magazine,  The  Flash.  We  don't  print  any  stories  that 
aren't  established  as  true.  Well,  your  experience  has  given 
me  real  courage,  Miss  Scarlett.  Thank  you." 

The  astral  enthusiast  clasped  Sylvia's  hand  and  gazed 
at  her  as  earnestly  as  if  she  had  noticed  a  smut  on  her 
nose. 

"Yes,  I'm  sure  we  ought  to  be  grateful,"  said  the  lady 
from  Iowa.  "My!  Our  footsteps  are  treading  in  the 
unseen  every  day  of  our  lives!  You  certainly  are  privi- 
leged," she  added,  wrapping  Sylvia  in  a  damp  mist  of 
benign  fatuity. 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  elaborate  everything  so,"  Sylvia 
begged  of  Arthur  when  she  had  escaped  from  the  deifica- 
tion of  the  two  psychical  ladies.  "It  makes  me  feel  so 
dreadfully  old  to  see  myself  assuming  a  legendary  shape 
before  my  own  eyes.  It's  as  painful  as  being  stuffed  alive 
— stuffed  alive  with  nonsense,"  she  added,  with  a  laugh. 

Arthur's  expansion,  however,  was  not  merely  grafted  on 
Sylvia's  presentiment  of  his  discovery  in  Sulphurville;  he 
blossomed  upon  his  own  stock,  a  little  exotically,  perhaps, 
like  the  clumps  of  fiery  cannas  in  the  grounds  of  the  hotel, 
but  with  a  quite  conspicuous  effectiveness.  Like  the 
cannas,  he  required  protection  from  frost,  for  there  was  a 
very  real  sensitiveness  beneath  all  that  flamboyance,  and 
it  was  the  knowledge  of  this  that  kept  Sylvia  from  criti- 
cizing him  at  all  severely.  Besides,  even  if  he  did  bask  a 
little  too  complacently  in  expressions  of  interest  and  sym- 
pathy, it  was  a  very  natural  reaction  from  his  wretched 
solitude  at  the  Auburn  Hotel,  for  which  he  could  scarcely 
be  held  culpable,  least  of  all  by  herself.  Moreover,  was 
not  this  so  visible  recovery  the  best  tribute  he  could  have 
paid  to  her  care?  If  he  appeared  to  strut — for,  indeed, 
there  was  a  hint  of  strutting  in  his  demeanor — he  only  did 
so  from  a  sense  of  well-being.  Finally,  if  any  further 
defense  was  necessary,  he  was  an  Englishman  among  a 


Sylvia    Scarlett  385 

crowd  of  Americans;  the  conditions  demanded  a  good  deal 
of  competitive  self-assertion. 

Meanwhile  summer  was  gone;  the  trees  glowed  with 
every  shade  of  crimson.  Sylvia  could  not  help  feeling  that 
there  was  something  characteristic  in  the  demonstrative 
richness  of  the  American  fall;  though  she  was  far  from 
wishing  to  underrate  its  beauty,  the  display  was  oppres- 
sive. She  sighed  for  the  melancholy  of  the  European 
autumn,  a  conventional  emotion,  no  doubt,  but  so  closely 
bound  up  with  old  associations  that  she  could  not  wish  to 
lose  it.  This  cremation  of  summer,  these  leafy  pyro- 
technics, this  holocaust  of  color,  seemed  a  too  barbaric 
celebration  of  the  year's  death.  It  was  significant  that 
autumn  with  its  long-drawn-out  suggestion  of  decline 
should  here  have  failed  to  displace  fall;  for  there  was 
something  essentially  catastrophic  in  this  ruthless  bonfire 
of  foliage.  It  was  not  surprising  that  the  aboriginal 
inhabitants  should  have  been  redskins,  nor  that  the 
gorgeousness  of  nature  should  have  demanded  from  the 
humanity  it  overwhelmed  a  readjustment  of  decorative 
values  which  superficial  observers  were  apt  to  mistake 
for  gaudy  ostentation.  Sylvia  could  readily  imagine  that 
if  she  had  been  accustomed  from  childhood  to  these  crimson 
woods,  these  beefy  robins,  and  these  saucer-eyed  daisies, 
she  might  have  found  her  own  more  familiar  landscapes 
merely  tame  and  pretty;  but  as  it  was  she  felt  dazzled  and 
ill  at  ease.  It's  a  little  more  and  how  much  it  is,  she  told 
herself,  pondering  the  tantalizing  similarity  that  was  real- 
ly as  profoundly  different  as  an  Amazonian  forest  from 
Kensington  Gardens. 

Arthur's  first  flamboyance  was  much  toned  down  by  all 
that  natural  splendor;  in  fact,  it  no  longer  existed,  and 
Sylvia  found  a  freshening  charm  in  his  company  amid 
these  crimson  trees  and  unfamiliar  birds,  and  in  this  star- 
ing white  hotel  with  its  sulphurous  exhalations.  His 
complete  restoration  to  health,  moreover,  was  a  pleasure 
and  a  pride  that  nothing  could  mar,  and  she  found  herself 
planning  his  happiness  and  prosperity  as  if  she  had  already 
transferred  to  him  all  she  herself  hoped  from  life. 

At  the  end  of  September  the  long-expected  remittance 
arrived  from  Mrs.  Madden,  and  Sylvia  gathered  from  the 


386  Sylvia    Scarlett 

letter  that  the  poor  lady  had  been  much  puzzled  to  send 
the  money. 

"We  must  cable  it  back  to  her  at  once,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Oh,  well,  now  it's  come,  is  that  wise?"  Arthur  objected. 
"She  may  have  had  some  difficulty  in  getting  it,  but  that's 
over  now." 

"No,  no.  It  must  be  cabled  back  to  her.  I've  got  plenty 
of  money  to  carry  us  on  till  we  begin  to  work  together." 

"But  I  can't  go  on  accepting  charity  like  this,"  Arthur 
protested.  "It's  undignified,  really.  I've  never  done  such 
a  thing  before." 

"You  accepted  it  from  your  mother." 

"Oh,  but  my  mother's  different." 

"Only  because  she's  less  able  to  afford  it  than  I  am," 
Sylvia  pointed  out.  "Look,  she's  sent  you  fifty  pounds. 
Think  how  jolly  it  would  be  for  her  suddenly  to  receive 
fifty  pounds  for  herself." 

Arthur  warmed  to  the  idea;  he  could  not  resist  the 
picture  of  his  mother's  pleasure,  nor  the  kind  of  inverted 
generosity  with  which  it  seemed  to  endow  himself.  He 
talked  away  about  the  arrival  of  the  money  in  England  till 
it  almost  seemed  as  if  he  were  sending  his  mother  the 
accumulation  of  hard-earned  savings  to  buy  herself  a  new 
piano;  that  was  the  final  purpose  to  which,  in  Arthur's 
expanding  fancy,  the  fifty  pounds  was  to  be  put.  Sylvia 
found  his  attitude  rather  boyish  and  charming,  and  they 
had  an  argument,  on  the  way  to  cable  the  money  back, 
whether  it  would  be  better  for  Mrs.  Madden  to  buy  a 
Bechstein  or  a  Bliithner. 

Sylvia's  contract  with  the  Plutonian  expired  with  the 
first  fortnight  of  October,  and  they  decided  to  see  what 
likelihood  there  was  of  work  in  New  York  before  they 
thought  of  returning  to  Europe.  They  left  Sulphurville 
with  everybody's  good  wishes,  because  everybody  owed  to 
their  romantic  meeting  an  opportunity  of  telling  a  really 
good  ghost  story  at  first  hand,  with  the  liberty  of  individual 
elaboration. 

New  York  was  very  welcome  after  Sulphurville.  They 
passed  the  wooded  heights  of  the  Hudson  at  dusk  in  a  glow 
of  somber  magnificence  softened  by  the  vapors  of  the 
river.  It  seemed  to  Sylvia  that  scarcely  ever  had  she  con- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  387 

templated  a  landscape  of  such  restrained  splendor,  and 
she  thought  of  that  young  New-Yorker  who  had  preferred 
not  to  travel  more  than  fifty  miles  west  of  his  native  city, 
though  the  motive  of  his  loyalty  had  most  improbably 
been  the  beauty  of  the  Hudson.  She  wondered  if  Arthur 
appreciated  New  York,  but  he  responded  to  her  enthusi- 
asm with  the  superficial  complaints  of  the  Englishman, 
complaints  that  when  tested  resolved  themselves  into  con- 
ventional formulas  of  disapproval. 

"I  suppose  trite  opinions  are  a  comfortable  possession," 
Sylvia  said.  "  But  a  good  player  does  not  like  a  piano  that 
is  too  easy.  You  complain  of  the  morning  papers'  appear- 
ing shortly  after  midnight,  but  confess  that  in  your  heart 
you  prefer  reading  them  in  bed  to  reading  a  London  evening 
paper,  limp  from  being  carried  about  in  the  pocket  and 
with  whatever  is  important  in  it  illegible." 

"But  the  flaring  head-lines,"  Arthur  protested.  "You 
surely  don't  like  them  ?" 

"Oh,  but  I  do!"  she  avowed.  "They're  as  much  more 
amusing  than  the  dreary  column  beneath  as  tinned  tongue 
is  nicer  than  the  dry  undulation  for  which  you  pay  twice 
as  much.  Head-lines  are  the  poetry  of  journalism,  and, 
after  all,  what  would  the  Parthenon  be  without  its  frieze?" 

"Of  course  you'd  argue  black  was  white,"  Arthur  said. 

"Well,  that's  a  better  standpoint  than  accepting  every- 
thing as  gray." 

"Most  things  are  gray." 

"Oh  no,  they're  not!  Some  things  are.  Old  men's 
beards  and  dirty  linen  and  Tschaikowsky's  music  and 
oysters  and  Wesleyans." 

"There  you  go,"  he  jeered. 

"Where  do  I  go?" 

"  Right  off  the  point,"  said  Arthur,  triumphantly.  "No 
woman  can  argue." 

"Oh,  but  I'm  not  a  woman,"  Sylvia  contradicted.  "I'm 
a  mythical  female  monster,  don't  you  know — one  of  those 
queer  beasts  with  claws  like  hay-rakes  and  breasts  like 
peg-tops  and  a  tail  like  a  fish." 

"Do  you  mean  a  Sphinx?"  Arthur  asked,  in  his  literal 
way.  He  was  always  rather  hostile  toward  her  extrava- 
gant fancies,  because  he  thought  it  dangerous  to  encourage 


388  Sylvia    Scarlett 

a  woman  in  much  the  same  way  as  he  would  have  objected 
to  encouraging  a  beggar. 

"No,  I  really  meant  a  grinx,  which  is  rather  like  a 
Sphinx,  but  the  father  was  a  griffin — the  mother  in  both 
cases  was  a  minx,  of  course." 

"What  was  the  father  of  the  Sphinx?"  he  asked,  rather 
ungraciously. 

Sylvia  clapped  her  hands. 

"I  knew  you  wouldn't  be  able  to  resist  the  question. 
A  sphere — a  woman's  sphere,  of  course,  which  is  nearly  as 
objectionable  a  beast  as  a  lady's  man." 

"You  do  talk  rot  sometimes,"  said  Arthur. 

"Don't  you  ever  have  fancies?"  she  demanded,  mock- 
ingly. 

"Yes,  of  course,  but  practical  fancies." 

"Practical  fancies,"  Sylvia  echoed.  "Oh,  my  dear,  it 
sounds  like  a  fairy  in  Jaeger  combinations!  You  don't 
know  what  fun  it  is  talking  rot  to  you,  Arthur.  It's  like 
hoaxing  a  chicken  with  marbles.  You  walk  away  from  my 
conversation  with  just  the  same  disgusted  dignity." 

"You  haven't  changed  a  bit,"  Arthur  proclaimed. 
"You're  just  the  same  as  you  were  at  fifteen." 

Sylvia,  who  had  been  teasing  him  with  a  breath  of 
malice,  was  penitent  at  once;  after  all,  he  had  once  run 
away  with  her,  and  it  would  be  difficult  for  any  woman  of 
twenty-eight  not  to  rejoice  a  little  at  the  implication  of 
thirteen  undestructive  years. 

"That  last  remark  was  like  a  cocoanut  thrown  by  a 
monkey  from  the  top  of  the  cocoanut-palm,"  she  said. 
"You  meant  it  to  be  crushing,  but  it  was  crushed  instead, 
and  quite  deliciously  sweet  inside." 

All  the  time  that  Sylvia  had  been  talking  so  lightly, 
while  the  train  was  getting  nearer  and  nearer  to  New  York, 
there  had  lain  at  the  back  of  her  mind  the  insistent  prob- 
lem of  her  relationship  to  Arthur.  The  impossibility  of 
their  going  on  together  as  friends  and  nothing  more  had 
been  firmly  fixed  upon  her  consciousness  for  a  long  time 
now,  and  the  reason  of  this  was  to  be  sought  for  less  in 
Arthur  than  in  herself.  So  far  they  had  preserved  all  the 
outward  semblances  of  friendship,  but  she  knew  that  one 
look  from  her  eyes  deep  into  his  would  transform  him  into 


Sylvia    Scarlett  389 

her  lover.  She  gave  Arthur  credit  for  telling  himself  quite 
sincerely  that  it  would  be  "caddish"  to  make  love  to  her 
while  he  remained  under  what  he  would  consider  a  grave 
obligation;  and  because  with  his  temperament  it  would  be 
as  much  in  the  ordinary  routine  of  the  day  to  make  love 
to  a  woman  as  to  dress  himself  in  the  morning.  She 
praised  his  decorum  and  was  really  half  grateful  to  him  for 
managing  to  keep  his  balance  on  the  very  small  pedestal 
that  she  had  provided.  She  might  fairly  presume,  too, 
that  if  she  let  Arthur  fall  in  love  with  her  he  would  wish 
to  marry  her.  Why  should  she  not  marry  him?  It  was 
impossible  to  answer  without  accusing  herself  of  a  cyni- 
cism that  she  was  far  from  feeling,  yet  without  which  she 
could  not  explain  even  to  herself  her  quite  definite  repul- 
sion from  the  idea  of  marrying  him.  The  future,  really, 
now,  the  very  immediate  future,  must  be  flung  to  chance; 
it  was  hopeless  to  arrogate  to  her  forethought  the  deter- 
mination of  it;  besides,  here  was  New  York  already. 

"We'd  better  go  to  my  old  hotel,"  Sylvia  suggested. 
Was  it  the  reflection  of  her  own  perplexity,  or  did  she 
detect  in  Arthur's  accents  a  note  of  relief,  as  if  he  too  had 
been  watching  the  Palisades  of  the  Hudson  and  speculating 
upon  the  far  horizon  they  concealed  ? 

They  dined  at  Rector's,  and  after  dinner  they  walked 
down  Broadway  into  Madison  Square,  where  upon  this 
mild  October  night  the  Metropolitan  Tower,  that  best  of 
all  the  Gargantuan  baby's  toys,  seemed  to  challenge  the 
indifferent  moon.  They  wandered  up  Madison  Avenue, 
which  was  dark  after  the  winking  sky-signs  of  Broadway 
and  with  its  not  very  tall  houses  held  a  thought  of  London 
in  the  darkness.  But  when  Sylvia  turned  to  look  back  it 
was  no  longer  London,  for  she  could  see  the  great,  illumi- 
nated hands  and  numerals  of  the  clock  in  the  Metropolitan 
flashing  from  white  to  red  for  the  hour.  This  clock  without 
a  dial-plate  was  the  quietest  of  the  Gargantuan  baby's 
toys,  for  it  did  not  strike;  one  was  conscious  of  the  almost 
pathetic  protest  against  all  those  other  damnably  noisy 
toys:  one  felt  he  might  become  so  enamoured  of  its  pretty 
silence  that  to  provide  himself  with  a  new  diversion  he 
might  take  to  doubling  the  hours  to  keep  pace  with  the 
rapidity  of  the  life  with  which  he  played. 


390  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"It's  almost  as  if  we  were  walking  up  Haverstock  Hill 
again/'  said  Arthur. 

"And  we're  grown  up  now,"  Sylvia  murmured.  "Oh, 
dreadfully  grown  up,  really!" 

They  walked  on  for  a  while  in  silence.  It  was  impossible 
to  keep  back  the  temptation  to  cheat  time  by  leaping  over 
the  gulf  of  years  and  being  what  they  were  when  last  they 
walked  along  together  like  this.  Sylvia  kept  looking  over 
her  shoulder  at  the  bland  clock  hanging  in  the  sky  behind 
them;  at  this  distance  the  fabric  of  the  tower  had  melted 
into  the  night  and  was  no  longer  visible,  which  gave  to  the 
clock  a  strange  significance  and  made  it  a  simulacrum  of 
time  itself. 

"You  haven't  changed  a  bit,"  she  said. 

"Do  you  remember  when  you  told  me  I  looked  like  a 
cow?  It  was  after" — he  breathed  perceptibly  faster — 
"after  I  kissed  you." 

She  would  not  ascribe  his  remembering  what  she  had 
called  him  to  an  imperfectly  healed  scar  of  vanity,  but 
with  kindlier  thoughts  turned  it  to  a  memento  of  his  affec- 
tion for  her.  After  all,  she  had  loved  him  then;  it  had  been 
a  girl's  love,  but  did  there  ever  come  with  age  a  better  love 
than  that  first  flushed  gathering  of  youth's  opening  flowers  ? 

"  Sylvia,  I've  thought  about  you  ever  since.  When  you 
drove  me  away  from  Colonial  Terrace  I  felt  like  killing 
myself.  Surely  we  haven't  met  again  for  nothing." 

"Is  it  nothing  unless  I  love  you?"  she  asked,  fiercely, 
striving  to  turn  the  words  into  weapons  to  pierce  the 
recesses  of  his  thoughts  and  blunt  themselves  against  a 
true  heart. 

"Ah  no,  I  won't  say  that,"  he  cried.  "Besides,  I 
haven't  the  right  to  talk  about  love.  You've  been — 
Sylvia,  I  can't  tell  you  what  you've  been  to  me  since  I  met 
you  again." 

"If  I  could  only  believe — oh,  but  believe  with  all  of  me 
that  was  and  is  and  ever  will  be — that  I  could  have  been 
so  much." 

"You  have,  you  have." 

"  Don't  take  my  love  as  a  light  thing,"  she  warned  him. 
"It's  not  that  I'm  wanting  so  very  much  for  myself,  but  I 
want  to  be  so  much  to  you." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  391 

"Sylvia,  won't  you  marry  me?  I  couldn't  ever  take 
your  love  lightly.  Indeed.  Really." 

"Ah,  it's  not  asking  me  to  marry  you  that  means  you're 
serious.  I'm  not  asking  you  what  your  intentions  are. 
I'm  asking  if  you  want  me." 

"Sylvia,  I  want  you  dreadfully." 

"Now,  now?"  she  pressed. 

"Now  and  always." 

They  had  stopped  without  being  aware  of  it.  A  trolley- 
car  jangled  by,  casting  transitory  lights  that  wavered 
across  Arthur's  face,  and  Sylvia  could  see  how  his  eyes 
were  shining.  She  dreaded  lest  by  adding  a  few  conven- 
tional words  he  should  spoil  what  he  had  said  so  well,  but 
he  waited  for  her,  as  in  the  old  days  he  had  always  waited. 

"You're  not  cultivating  this  love,  like  a  convalescent 
patient  does  for  his  nurse?"  Sylvia  demanded. 

She  stopped  herself  abruptly,  conscious  that  every  ques- 
tion she  put  to  him  was  ultimately  being  put  to  herself. 

"Did  I  ever  not  love  you?"  he  asked.  "It  was  you 
that  grew  tired  of  me.  It  was  you  that  sent  me  away." 

"Don't  pretend  that  all  these  years  you've  been  waiting 
for  me  to  come  back,"  she  scoffed. 

"Of  course  not.  What  I'm  trying  to  explain  is  that  we 
can  start  now  where  we  left  off;  that  is,  if  you  will." 

He  held  out  his  hand  half  timidly. 

"And  if  I  won't?" 

The  hand  dropped  again  to  his  side,  and  there  was  so 
much  wounded  sensitiveness  in  the  slight  gesture  that 
Sylvia  caught  him  to  her  as  if  he  were  a  child  who  had 
fallen  and  needed  comforting. 

"When  I  first  put  my  head  on  your  shoulder,"  she  mur- 
mured. "Oh,  how  well  I  can  remember  the  day — such  a 
sparkling  day,  with  London  spread  out  like  life  at  our  feet. 
Now  we're  in  the  middle  of  New  York,  but  it  seems  just  as 
far  away  from  us  two  as  London  was  that  day — and  life," 
she  added,  with  a  sigh. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

CIRCUMSTANCES  seemed  to  applaud  almost  im- 
mediately the  step  that  Sylvia  had  taken.  There 
was  no  long  delay  caused  by  looking  for  work  in  New  York, 
which  might  have  destroyed  romance  by  its  interposition 
of  fretful  hopes  and  disappointments.  A  variety  company 
was  going  to  leave  in  November  for  a  tour  in  eastern 
Canada.  At  least  two  months  would  be  spent  in  the 
French  provinces,  and  Sylvia's  bilingual  accomplishment 
was  exactly  what  the  manager  wanted. 

"I'm  getting  on,"  she  laughed.  "I  began  by  singing 
French  songs  with  an  English  accent;  I  advanced  from 
that  to  acting  English  words  with  a  French  accent;  now 
I'm  going  to  be  employed  in  doing  both.  But  what  does 
it  matter?  The  great  thing  is  that  we  should  be 
together." 

That  was  where  Arthur  made  the  difference  to  her  life; 
he  was  securing  her  against  the  loneliness  that  at  twenty- 
eight  was  beginning  once  more  to  haunt  her  imagination. 
What  did  art  matter?  It  had  never  been  anything  but  a 
refuge. 

Arthur  himself  was  engaged  to  sing,  and  though  he  had 
not  such  a  good  voice  as  Claude  Raglan,  he  sang  with  much 
better  taste  and  was  really  musical.  Sylvia  was  annoyed 
to  find  herself  making  comparisons  between  Claude  and 
Arthur.  It  happened  at  the  moment  that  Arthur  was 
fussing  about  his  number  on  the  program,  and  she  could 
not  help  being  reminded  of  Claude's  attitude  toward  his 
own  artistic  importance.  She  consoled  herself  by  thinking 
that  it  should  always  be  one  of  her  aims  to  prevent  the 
likeness  growing  any  closer;  then  she  laughed  at  herself 
for  this  resolve,  which  savored  of  developing  Arthur,  that 
process  she  had  always  so  much  condemned. 

They  opened  at  Toronto,  and  after  playing  a  week 


Sylvia    Scarlett  393 

Arthur  caught  a  chill  and  was  out  of  the  program  for  a 
fortnight;  this  gave  Sylvia  a  fresh  opportunity  of  looking 
after  him;  and  Toronto  in  wet,  raw  weather  was  so  dreary 
that,  to  come  back  to  the  invalid  after  the  performance, 
notwithstanding  the  ineffable  discomfort  of  the  hotel,  was 
to  come  back  home.  During  this  time  Sylvia  gave  Arthur 
a  history  of  the  years  that  had  gone  by  since  they  parted, 
and  it  puzzled  her  that  he  should  be  so  jealous  of  the  past. 
She  wondered  why  she  could  not  feel  the  same  jealousy 
about  his  past,  and  she  found  herself  trying  to  regret  that 
red-haired  girl  and  many  others  on  account  of  the  obvious 
pleasure  such  regrets  afforded  Arthur.  She  used  to  wonder, 
too,  why  she  always  left  out  certain  incidents  and  obscured 
certain  aspects  of  her  own  past,  whether,  for  instance,  she 
did  not  tell  him  about  Michael  Fane  on  her  own  account 
or  because  she  was  afraid  that  Arthur  would  perceive  a 
superficial  resemblance  between  himself  and  Claude  and  a 
very  real  one  between  herself  and  Lily,  or  because  she 
would  have  resented  from  Arthur  the  least  expression,  not 
so  much  of  contempt  as  even  of  mild  surprise,  at  Michael's 
behavior.  Another  subject  she  could  never  discuss  with 
Arthur  was  her  mother's  love  for  her  father,  notwithstand- 
ing that  his  own  mother's  elopement  with  a  groom  must 
have  prevented  the  least  criticism  on  his  side.  Here  again 
she  wondered  if  her  reserve  was  due  to  loyalty  or  to  a 
vague  sense  of  temperamental  repetition  that  was  con- 
demning her  to  stand  in  the  same  relation  to  Arthur  as  her 
mother  to  her  father.  She  positively  had  to  run  away  from 
the  idea  that  Arthur  had  his  prototype;  she  was  shutting 
him  up  in  a  box  and  scarcely  even  looking  at  him,  which 
was  as  good  as  losing  him  altogether,  really.  Even  when 
she  did  look  at  him  she  handled  him  with  such  exaggerated 
carefulness,  for  fear  of  his  getting  broken,  that  all  the 
pleasure  of  possession  was  lost.  Perhaps  she  should  have 
had  an  equal  anxiety  to  preserve  intact  anybody  else  with 
whom  she  might  have  thrown  in  her  lot;  but  when  she 
thought  over  this  attitude  it  was  dismaying  enough  and 
seemed  to  imply  an  incapacity  on  her  part  to  enioy  fully 
anything  in  life. 

"I've  grown  out  of  being  destructive;    at  least  I  think 
I  have.    I  wonder  if  the  normal  process  from  Jacobinism 


394  Sylvia    Scarlett 

to  the  intense  conservatism  of  age  is  due  to  wisdom, 
jealousy,  or  fear. 

"Arthur,  what  are  your  politics?"  she  asked,  aloud. 

He  looked  up  from  the  game  of  patience  he  was  playing, 
a  game  in  which  he  was  apt  to  attribute  the  pettiest 
personal  motives  to  the  court-cards  whenever  he  failed  to 
get  out. 

"Politics?"  he  echoed,  vaguely.  "I  don't  think  I  ever 
had  any.  I  suppose  I'm  a  Conservative.  Oh  yes,  certainly 
I'm  a  Conservative.  That  infernal  knave  of  hearts  is 
covered  now!"  he  added,  in  an  aggrieved  voice. 

"Well,  I  didn't  cover  it,"  said  Sylvia. 

"No,  dear,  of  course  you  didn't.  But  it  really  is  a 
most  extraordinary  thing  that  I  always  get  done  by  the 
knaves." 

"You  share  your  misfortune  with  the  rest  of  humanity, 
if  that's  any  consolation." 

The  conversation  was  interrupted  by  the  entrance  of 
Orlone.  He  was  a  huge  Neapolitan  with  the  countenance 
of  a  gigantic  and  swarthy  Punch,  who  had  been  trying  to 
get  back  to  Naples  for  twenty  years,  but  had  been  pre- 
vented at  first  by  his  passion  for  gambling  and  afterward 
by  an  unwilling  wife  and  a  numerous  family.  Orlone 
made  even  Toronto  cheerful,  and  before  he  had  come  two 
paces  into  a  room  Sylvia  always  began  to  laugh.  He  never 
said  anything  deliberately  funny  except  on  the  stage,  but 
laughter  emanated  from  him  infectiously,  as  yawning 
might.  Though  he  had  spent  twenty  years  in  America, 
he  still  spoke  the  most  imperfect  English;  and  when  he 
and  Sylvia  had  done  laughing  at  each  other  they  used  to 
laugh  all  over  again,  she  at  his  English,  he  at  her  Italian. 
When  they  had  finished  laughing  at  that  Orlone  used  to 
swear  marvelously  for  Sylvia's  benefit  whenever  she  should 
again  visit  Sirene;  and  she  would  teach  him  equally  tre- 
mendous oaths  in  case  he  should  ever  come  to  London. 
When  they  had  finished  laughing  at  this,  Orlone  would 
look  over  Arthur's  shoulder  and,  after  making  the  most 
ridiculous  gestures  of  caution,  would  finally  burst  out 
into  an  absolute  roar  of  laughter  right  in  Arthur's  ear. 

"Pazienza,"  Sylvia  would  say,  pointing  to  the  outspread 
cards. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  395 

"  Brava  signora!    Come  parla  bene!" 

And  of  course  this  was  obviously  so  absurd  a  statement 
that  it  would  set  them  off  laughing  again. 

"You  are  a  pair  of  lunatics,"  Arthur  would  protest;  he 
would  have  liked  to  be  annoyed  at  his  game's  being  inter- 
rupted, but  he  was  powerless  to  repulse  Orlone's  good 
humor. 

When  they  returned  to  New  York  in  the  spring  and 
Sylvia  looked  back  at  the  tour,  she  divined  how  much  of 
her  pleasure  in  it  had  been  owed  to  Orlone's  all-pervading 
mirth.  He  had  really  provided  the  robust  and  full-blooded 
contrast  to  Arthur  that  had  been  necessary.  It  was  not 
exactly  that  without  him  their  existence  together  would 
have  been  insipid — oh  no,  there  was  nothing  insipid  about 
Arthur,  but  one  appreciated  his  delicacy  after  that  rude 
and  massive  personality.  When  they  had  traveled  over 
leagues  of  snow-covered  country,  Orlone  had  always 
lightened  the  journey  with  gay  Neapolitan  songs,  and 
sometimes  with  tender  ones  like  "Torno  di  Surriento." 
It  was  then  that,  gazing  out  over  the  white  waste,  she  had 
been  able  to  take  Arthur's  hand  and  sigh  to  be  sitting  with 
him  on  some  Sirenian  cliff,  to  smell  again  the  rosemary 
and  crumble  with  her  fingers  the  sunburnt  earth.  But  this 
capacity  of  Orlone's  for  conjuring  up  the  long  Partheno- 
pean  shore  was  nothing  more  than  might  have  been 
achieved  by  any  terra-cotta  Silenus  in  a  provincial 
museum.  After  Silenus,  what  nymph  would  not  turn  to 
Hylas  somewhat  gratefully?  It  had  been  the  greatest  fun 
in  the  world  to  drive  in  tinkling  sledges  through  Montreal, 
with  Orlone  to  tease  the  driver  until  he  was  as  sore  as  the 
head  of  the  bear  that  in  his  fur  coat  he  resembled;  it  had 
been  fun  to  laugh  with  Orlone  in  Quebec  and  Ottawa  and 
everywhere  else;  but  after  so  much  laughter  it  had  always 
been  particularly  delightful  to  be  alone  again  with  Arthur, 
and  to  feel  that  he  too  was  particularly  enjoying  being 
alone  with  her. 

"  I  really  do  think  we  get  on  well  together,'*  she  said  to 
him. 

"Of  course  we  do." 

And  was  there  in  'the  way  he  agreed  with  her  just  the 
least  suggestion  that  he  should  have  been  surprised  if  she 


396  Sylvia    Scarlett 

had  not  enjoyed  his  company,  an  almost  imperceptible 
hint  of  complacency,  or  was  it  condescension  ? 

"I  really  must  get  out  of  this  habit  of  poking  my  nose 
into  other  people's  motives,"  Sylvia  told  herself.  "I'm 
like  a  horrid  little  boy  with  a  new  penknife.  Arthur  could 
fairly  say  to  me  that  I  forced  myself  upon  him.  I  did 
really.  I  went  steaming  into  the  Auburn  Hotel  like  a 
salvage-tug.  There's  the  infernal  side  of  obligations — I 
can't  really  quite  free  myself  from  the  notion  that  Arthur 
ought  to  be  grateful  to  me.  He's  in  a  false  position 
through  no  fault  of  his  own,  and  he's  behaving  beautifully. 
It's  my  own  cheap  cynicism  that's  to  blame.  I  wish  I 
could  discover  some  mental  bitter  aloes  that  would  cure 
me  of  biting  my  mind,  as  I  cured  myself  of  biting  my 
nails." 

Sylvia  was  very  glad  that  Arthur  succeeded  in  getting 
an  engagement  that  spring  to  act,  and  that  she  did  not; 
she  was  really  anxious  to  let  him  feel  that  she  should  be 
dependent  on  him  for  a  while.  The  result  would  have  been 
entirely  satisfactory  but  for  one  flaw — the  increase  in 
Arthur's  sense  of  his  own  artistic  importance.  Sylvia 
would  not  have  minded  this  so  much  if  he  had  possessed 
enough  of  it  to  make  him  oblivious  of  the  world's  opinion, 
but  it  was  always  more  of  a  vanity  than  a  pride,  chiefly 
concerned  with  the  personal  impression  he  made.  It  gave 
him  much  more  real  pleasure  to  be  recognized  by  two  shop- 
girls on  their  afternoon  out  than  to  be  praised  by  a  leading 
critic.  Sylvia  would  have  liked  him  to  be  equally  contempt- 
uous of  either  form  of  flattery,  but  that  he  should  revel 
in  both,  and  actually  esteem  more  valuable  the  recognition 
accorded  him  by  a  shop-girl's  backward  glance  and  a 
nudge  from  her  companion  seemed  to  be  lamentable. 

"I  don't  see  why  you  should  despise  me  for  being 
pleased,"  Arthur  said.  "I'm  only  pleased  because  it's  a 
proof  that  I'm  getting  known." 

"  But  they'd  pay  the  same  compliment  to  a  man  with  a 
wen  on  his  nose." 

"No  doubt,  but  also  to  any  famous  man,"  Arthur  added. 

Sylvia  could  have  screamed  with  irritation  at  his  lack  of 
any  sense  of  proportion.  Why  could  he  not  be  like  Jack 
Airdale,  who  had  never  suffered  from  any  illusion  that 


Sylvia    Scarlett  397 

what  he  was  doing,  so  far  as  art  was  concerned,  was  not 
essentially  insignificant?  Yet,  after  all,  was  she  not  being 
unreasonable  in  paying  so  much  attention  to  a  childish 
piece  of  vanity  that  was  inseparable  from  the  true  his- 
trionic temperament? 

"I'm  sorry,  Arthur.  I  think  I'm  being  unfair  to  you.  I 
only  criticize  you  because  I  want  you  to  be  always  the  best 
of  you.  I  see  your  point  of  view,  but  I  was  irritated  by 
the  giggles/' 

"I  wasn't  paying  the  least  attention  to  the  girls.'* 

"Oh,  I  wasn't  jealous,"  she  said,  quickly.  "Oh  no, 
darling  Arthur,  even  with  the  great  affection  that  I  have 
for  you,  I  shall  never  be  able  to  be  jealous  of  your  making 
eyes  at  shop-girls." 

When  Arthur's  engagement  seemed  likely  to  come  to  an 
end  in  the  summer,  they  discussed  plans  and  decided  to 
take  a  holiday  in  the  country,  somewhere  in  Maine  or 
Vermont.  Arthur,  as  usual,  set  the  scene  beforehand,  but 
as  he  set  it  quite  in  accord  with  Sylvia's  taste  she  did  not 
mind.  Indeed,  their  holiday  in  Vermont  on  the  borders  of 
Lake  Champlain  was  as  near  as  she  ever  got  to  being 
perfectly  happy  with  Arthur — happy,  that  is,  to  the  point 
of  feeling  like  a  chill  the  prospect  of  separation.  Sylvia 
was  inclined  to  say  that  all  Arthur's  faults  were  due  to  the 
theater,  and  that  when  one  had  him  like  this  in  simple 
surroundings  the  best  side  of  him  was  uppermost  and 
visible,  like  a  spun  coin  that  shows  a  simple  head  when  it 
falls. 

Sylvia  found  that  she  had  brought  with  her  by  chance 
the  manuscript  of  the  poems  given  to  her  by  the  outcast 
Englishman  in  Paris,  and  Arthur  was  very  anxious  that  she 
should  come  back  to  her  idea  of  rendering  these.  He  had 
already  composed  a  certain  number  of  unimportant  songs 
in  his  career,  but  now  the  Muses  smiled  upon  him  (or 
perhaps  it  might  be  truer  to  speak  of  her  own  smiles,  Sylvia 
thought)  with  such  favor  that  he  set  a  dozen  poems  to  the 
very  accompaniment  they  wanted,  the  kind  of  music, 
moreover,  that  suited  Sylvia's  voice. 

"We  must  get  these  done  in  New  York,"  he  said;  but 
that  week  a  letter  came  from  Olive  Airdale,  and  Sylvia  had 
a  sudden  longing  for  England.  She  did  not  think  she 


398  Sylvia    Scarlett 

would  make  an  effort  to  do  anything  in  America.  The 
truth  was  that  she  had  supplemented  the  Englishman's 
poems  with  an  idea  of  her  own  to  give  impressions  gathered 
from  her  own  life.  It  was  strange  how  abruptly  the  long- 
ing to  express  herself  had  arrived,  but  it  had  arrived,  with 
a  force  and  fierceness  that  were  undeniable.  It  had  come, 
too,  with  that  authentic  fever  of  secrecy  that  she  divined 
a  woman  must  feel  in  the  first  moment  of  knowing  that 
she  has  conceived.  She  could  not  have  imparted  her  sense 
of  creation  to  any  one  else;  such  an  intimacy  of  revelation 
was  too  shocking  to  be  contemplated.  Somehow  she  was 
sure  that  this  strange  shamefulness  was  right  and  that  she 
was  entitled  to  hug  within  herself  the  conception  that 
would  soon  enough  be  turned  to  the  travail  of  birth. 

"By,  Jove!  Sylvia,  this  holiday  has  done  you  good!" 
Arthur  exclaimed. 

She  kissed  him  because,  ignorant  though  he  was  of  the 
true  reason,  she  owed  him  thanks  for  her  looks. 

"Sylvia,  if  we  go  back  to  England,  do  let's  be  married 
first." 

"Why?" 

"Why,  because  it's  not  fair  on  me." 

"On  you?" 

"Yes,  on  me.    People  will  always  blame  me,  of  course." 

"What  has  it  got  to  do  with  anybody  else  except  me?" 

"My  mother—'1 

"My  dear  Arthur,"  Sylvia  interrupted,  sharply,  "if  your 
mother  ran  away  with  a  groom,  she'll  be  the  first  person 
to  sympathize  with  my  point  of  view." 

"I  suppose  you're  trying  to  be  cruel,"  said  Arthur. 

"And  succeeding,  to  judge  by  your  dolorous  mouth. 
No,  my  dear,  let  the  suggestion  of  marriage  come  from 
me.  I  sha'n't  be  hurt  if  you  refuse." 

"Well,  are  we  to  pretend  we're  married?"  Arthur  asked, 
hopelessly. 

"Certainly  not,  if  by  that  you  mean  that  I'm  to  put 
'Mrs.  Arthur  Madden'  on  a  visiting-card.  Don't  look  so 
frightened.  I'm  not  proposing  to  march  into  drawing- 
rooms  with  a  big  drum  to  proclaim  my  emancipation  from 
the  social  decencies.  Don't  worry  me,  Arthur.  It's  al1 
much  too  complicated  to  explain,  but  I'll  tell  you  one 


Sylvia    Scarlett  399 

thing,  I'm  not  going  to  marry  you  merely  to  remove  the 
world's  censure  of  your  conduct,  and  as  long  as  you  feel 
about  marrying  me  as  you  might  feel  about  letting  me 
carry  a  heavy  bag,  I'll  never  marry  you." 

"I  don't  feel  a  bit  like  that  about  it,"  he  protested.  "If 
I  could  leave  you,  I'd  leave  you  now.  But  the  very 
thought  of  losing  you  makes  my  heart  stop  beating.  It's 
like  suddenly  coming  to  the  edge  of  a  precipice.  I  know 
perfectly  well  that  you  despise  me  at  heart.  You  think 
I'm  a  wretched  actor  with  no  feelings  off  the  stage.  You 
think  I  don't  know  my  own  mind,  if  you  even  admit  that 
I've  got  a  mind  at  all.  But  I'm  thirty-one.  I'm  not  a  boy. 
I've  had  a  good  many  women  in  love  with  me.  Now  don't 
begin  to  laugh.  I'm  determined  to  say  what  I  ought  to 
have  said  long  ago,  and  should  have  said  if  I  hadn't  been 
afraid  the  whole  time  of  losing  you.  If  I  lose  you  now  it 
can't  be  helped.  I'd  sooner  lose  you  than  go  on  being 
treated  like  a  child.  What  I  want  to  say  is  that,  though  I 
know  you  think  it  wasn't  worth  while  being  loved  by  the 
women  who've  loved  me,  I  do  think  it  was.  I'm  not  in  the 
least  ashamed  of  them.  Most  of  them,  at  any  rate,  were 
beautiful,  though  I  admit  that  all  of  them  put  together 
wouldn't  have  made  up  for  missing  you.  You're  a  thou- 
sand times  cleverer  than  I.  You've  got  much  more 
personality.  You've  every  right  to  consider  you've 
thrown  yourself  away  on  me.  But  the  fact  remains  that 
you've  done  it.  We've  been  together  now  a  year.  That 
proves  that  there  is  something  in  me.  I'm  prouder  of  this 
year  with  you  than  of  all  the  rest  of  my  life.  You've 
developed  me  in  the  most  extraordinary  way." 

"I  have?"  Sylvia  burst  in. 

"Of  course  you  have.  But  I'm  not  going  to  be  treated 
like  a  mantis." 

"Like  a  what?" 

"A  mantis.  You  can  read  about  it  in  that  French  book 
on  insects.  The  female  eats  the  male.  Well,  I'm  damned 
well  not  going  to  be  eaten.  I'm  not  going  back  to  England 
with  you  unless  you  marry  me." 

"Well,  I'm  not  going  to  marry  you,"  Sylvia  declared. 

"Very  well,  then  I  shall  try  to  get  an  engagement  on 
tour  and  we'll  separate." 
26 


400  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"So  much  the  better,"  she  said.  "I've  got  a  good  deal 
to  occupy  myself  at  present." 

"Of  course  you  can  have  the  music  I  wrote  for  those 
poems,"  said  Arthur. 

"  Damn  your  music,"  she  replied. 

Sylvia  was  so  much  obsessed  with  the  conviction  of 
having  at  last  found  a  medium  for  expressing  herself  in  art 
that,  though  she  was  vaguely  aware  of  having  a  higher 
regard  for  Arthur  at  this  moment  than  she  had  ever  had, 
she  could  only  behold  him  as  a  troublesome  visitor  that 
was  preventing  her  from  sitting  down  to  work. 

Arthur  went  off  on  tour.  Sylvia  took  an  apartment  in 
New  York  far  away  up-town  and  settled  down  to  test  her 
inspiration.  In  six  months  she  lived  her  whole  life  over 
again,  and  of  every  personality  that  had  touched  her  own 
and  left  its  mark  she  made  a  separate  presentation.  Her 
great  anxiety  was  to  give  to  each  sketch  the  air  of  an  im- 
provisation, and  in  the  course  of  it  to  make  her  people 
reveal  their  permanent  characters  rather  than  their 
transient  emotions.  It  was  really  based  on  the  art  of  the 
impersonator  who  comes  on  with  a  cocked  hat,  sticks  out 
his  neck,  puts  his  hands  behind  his  back,  and  his  legs  apart, 
leans  over  to  the  audience,  and  whispers  Napoleon.  Sylvia 
thought  she  could  extend  the  pleasures  of  recognition 
beyond  the  mere  mimicry  of  externals  to  a  finer  mimicry  of 
essentials.  She  wanted  an  audience  to  clap  not  because 
she  could  bark  sufficiently  like  a  real  dog  to  avoid  being 
mistaken  for  a  kangaroo,  but  because  she  could  be  suffi- 
ciently Mrs.  Gainsborough  not  to  be  recognized  as  Mrs. 
Beardmore — yet  without  relying  upon  their  respective 
sizes  in  corsets  to  mark  the  difference.  She  did  not  intend 
to  use  even  make-up;  the  entertainment  was  always  to 
be  an  improvisation.  It  was  also  to  be  undramatic;  that 
is  to  say,  it  was  not  to  obtain  its  effect  by  working  to  a 
climax,  so  that,  however  well  hidden  the  mechanism  might 
have  been  during  the  course  of  the  presentation,  the  ma- 
chinery would  reveal  itself  at  the  end.  Sylvia  wanted  to 
make  each  member  of  the  audience  feel  that  he  had 
dreamed  her  improvisation,  or  rather  she  hoped  that  he 
would  gain  from  it  that  elusive  sensation  of  having  lived 
it  before,  and  that  the  effect  upon  each  person  listening  to 


Sylvia    Scarlett  401 

her  should  be  ultimately  incommunicable,  like  a  dream. 
She  was  sure  now  that  she  could  achieve  this  effect  with  the 
poems,  not,  as  she  had  originally  supposed,  through  their 
objective  truthfulness,  but  through  their  subjective  truth. 
That  outcast  Englishman  should  be  one  of  her  improvisa- 
tions, and  of  course  the  original  idea  of  letting  the  poems 
be  accompanied  by  music  would  be  ruinous;  one  might  as 
well  illustrate  them  with  a  magic  lantern.  As  to  her  own 
Inventions,  she  must  avoid  giving  them  a  set  form,  because, 
whatever  actors  might  urge  to  the  contrary,  a  play  could 
never  really  be  performed  twice  by  the  same  caste.  She 
would  have  a  scene  painted  like  those  futurist  Italian 
pictures;  they  were  trying  to  do  with  color  what  she  was 
trying  to  do  with  acting;  they  were  striving  to  escape 
from  the  representation  of  mere  externals,  and  often 
succeeding  almost  too  well,  she  added,  with  a  smile. 
She  would  get  hold  of  Ronald  Walker  in  London,  who 
doubtless  by  now  would  be  too  prosperous  to  serve  her 
purpose  himself,  but  who  would  probably  know  of  some 
newly  fledged  painter  anxious  to  flap  his  wings. 

At  the  end  of  six  months  Sylvia  had  evolved  enough 
improvisations  to  make  a  start.  She  went  to  bed  tired  out 
with  the  last  night's  work,  and  woke  up  in  the  morning 
with  a  sense  of  blankness  at  the  realization  of  there  being 
nothing  to  do  that  day.  All  the  time  she  had  been  work- 
ing she  had  been  content  to  be  alone;  she  had  even  looked 
forward  to  amusing  herself  in  New  York  when  her  work 
was  finished.  Now  the  happy  moment  had  come  and  she 
could  feel  nothing  but  this  empty  boredom.  She  won- 
dered what  Arthur  was  doing,  and  she  reproached  herself 
for  the  way  in  which  she  had  discarded  him.  She  had  been 
so  thrilled  by  the  notion  that  she  was  necessary  to  some- 
body; it  had  seemed  to  her  the  consummation  of  so  many 
heedless  years.  Yet  no  sooner  had  she  successfully  im- 
posed herself  upon  Arthur  than  she  was  eager  to  think  of 
nothing  but  herself  without  caring  a  bit  about  his  point  of 
view.  Now  that  she  could  do  nothing  more  with  her  work 
until  the  test  of  public  performance  was  applied  to  it,  she 
was  bored;  in  fact,  she  missed  Arthur.  The  truth  was 
that  half  the  pleasure  of  being  necessary  to  somebody  else 
had  been  that  he  should  be  necessary  to  her.  But  marriage 


402  Sylvia    Scarlett 

with  Arthur?  Marriage  with  a  curly-headed  actor? 
Marriage  with  anybody?  No,  that  must  wait,  at  any  rate 
until  she  had  given  the  fruit  of  these  six  months  to  the 
world.  She  could  not  be  hampered  by  belonging  to  any- 
body before  that. 

"I  do  think  I'm  justified  in  taking  myself  a  little 
seriously  for  a  while,"  said  Sylvia,  "and  in  shutting  my 
eyes  to  my  own  absurdity.  Self-mockery  is  dangerous 
beyond  a  certain  point.  I  really  will  give  this  idea  of  mine 
a  fair  chance.  If  I'm  a  failure,  Arthur  will  love  me  all  the 
more  through  vanity,  and  if  I'm  a  success — I  suppose 
really  he'll  be  vain  of  that,  too." 

Sylvia  telegraphed  to  Arthur,  and  heard  that  he  ex- 
pected to  be  back  in  New  York  at  the  end  of  the  month. 
He  was  in  Buffalo  this  week.  Nothing  could  keep  her  a 
moment  longer  in  New  York  alone,  and  she  went  up  to 
join  him.  She  had  a  sudden  fear  when  she  arrived  that 
she  might  find  him  occupied  with  a  girl;  in  fact,  really, 
when  she  came  to  think  of  the  manner  in  which  she  had 
left  him,  it  was  most  improbable  that  she  should  not. 
She  nearly  turned  round  and  went  back  to  New  York;  but 
her  real  anxiety  to  see  Arthur  and  talk  to  him  about  her 
work  made  her  decide  to  take  the  risk  of  what  might  be 
the  deepest  humiliation  of  her  life.  It  was  strange  how 
much  she  wanted  to  talk  about  what  she  had  done;  the 
desire  to  do  so  now  was  as  overmastering  an  emotion  as 
had  been  in  the  first  moment  of  conception  the  urgency 
of  silence. 

Sylvia  was  spared  the  shock  of  finding  Arthur  wrapped 
up  in  some  one  else. 

"Sylvia,  how  wonderful!  What  a  relief  to  see  you 
again!"  he  exclaimed.  "I've  been  longing  for  you  to  see 
me  in  the  part  I'm  playing  now.  It's  certainly  the  most 
successful  thing  I've  done.  I'm  so  glad  you  kept  me  from 
wasting  myself  any  longer  on  that  concert  work.  I  really 
believe  I've  made  a  big  hit  at  last." 

Sylvia  was  almost  as  much  taken  aback  to  find  Arthur 
radiant  with  the  prospect  of  success  as  she  would  have 
been  to  find  him  head  over  ears  in  love.  She  derived  very 
little  satisfaction  from  the  way  in  which  he  attributed 
h|s  success  to  her;  she  was  not  at  all  in  the  mood 


Sylvia    Scarlett  403 

for  being  a  godmother,  now  that  she  had  a  baby  of 
her  own. 

"I'm  so  glad,  old  son.  That's  splendid.  Now  I  want 
to  talk  about  the  work  I've  been  doing  all  these  six 
months." 

Forthwith  she  plunged  into  the  details  of  the  scheme,  to 
which  Arthur  listened  attentively  enough,  though  he  only 
became  really  enthusiastic  when  she  could  introduce 
analogies  with  his  own  successful  performance. 

"You  will  go  in  front  to-night?"  he  begged.  "I'm 
awfully  keen  to  hear  what  you  think  of  my  show.  Half  my 
pleasure  in  the  hit  has  been  spoiled  by  your  not  having 
seen  it.  Besides,  I  think  you  11  be  interested  in  noticing 
that  once  or  twice  I  try  to  get  the  same  effect  as  you're 
trying  for  in  these  impersonations." 

"Damn  your  eyes,  Arthur,  they're  not  impersonations; 
they're  improvisations." 

"Did  I  say  impersonations?  I'm  sorry,"  said  Arthur, 
looking  rather  frightened. 

"Yes,  you'd  better  placate  me,"  she  threatened.  "Or 
I'll  spend  my  whole  time  looking  at  Niagara  and  never  go 
near  your  show." 

However,  Sylvia  did  go  to  see  the  play  that  night  and 
found  that  Arthur  really  was  excellent  in  his  part,  which 
was  that  of  the  usual  young  man  in  musical  comedy  who 
wanders  about  in  a  well-cut  flannel  suit,  followed  by  six 
young  women  with  parasols  ready  to  smother  him  with 
affection,  melody,  and  lace.  But  how,  even  in  the  intoxica- 
tion of  success,  he  had  managed  to  establish  a  single  anal- 
ogy with  what  she  proposed  to  do  was  beyond  compre- 
hension. 

Arthur  came  out  of  the  stage  door,  wreathed  in  ques- 
tions. 

"You  were  in  such  a  hurry  to  get  out,"  said  Sylvia, 
"that  you  didn't  take  off"  your  make-up  properly.  You'll 
get  arrested  if  you  walk  about  like  that.  I  hear  the  sump- 
tuary laws  in  Buffalo  are  very  strict." 

"No,  don't  rag.  Did  you  like  the  hydrangea  song? 
Do  you  remember  the  one  I  mean  ?" 

He  hummed  the  tune. 

"I  warn  you,  Arthur,  there's  recently  been  a  moral  up- 


404  Sylvia    Scarlett 

lift  in  Buffalo.  You  will  be  sewn  up  in  a  barrel  and  flung 
into  Niagara  if  you  don't  take  care.  No,  seriously.  I 
think  your  show  was  capital.  Which  brings  me  to  the 
point.  We  sail  for  Europe  at  the  end  of  April." 

"Oh,  but  do  you  think  it's  wise  for  me  to  leave  America 
now  that  I've  really  got  my  foot  in?" 

"Do  you  still  want  to  marry  me?" 

"More  than  ever,"  he  assured  her. 

"Very  well,  then.  Your  only  chance  of  marrying  me  is 
to  leave  New  York  without  a  murmur.  I've  thought  it  all 
out.  As  soon  as  I  get  back  I  shall  spend  my  last  shilling  on 
fitting  out  my  show.  When  I've  produced  it  and  when 
I've  found  out  that  I've  not  been  making  a  fool  of  myself 
for  the  last  six  months,  perhaps  I'll  marry  you.  Until 
then — as  friends  we  met,  as  anything  more  than  friends 
we  part.  Got  me,  Steve?" 

'  But,  Sylvia— " 

'But  me  no  buts,  or  you'll  get  my  goat.  Understand 
my  meaning,  Mr.  Stevenson?" 

'Yes,  only—" 

'The  discussion's  closed." 

'Are  we  engaged?" 

'I  don't  know.  We'll  have  to  see  our  agents  about 
that." 

"Oh,  don't  rag.  Marriage  is  not  a  joke.  You  are  a 
most  extraordinary  girl." 

"Thanks  for  the  discount.  I  shall  be  thirty  in  three 
months,  don't  forget.  Talking  of  the  advantages  of  rouge, 
you  might  get  rid  of  some  of  yours  before  supper,  if  you 
don't  mind." 

"Are  we  engaged?"  Arthur  repeated,  firmly. 

"No,  the  engagement  ring  and  the  marriage-bells  will 
be  pealed  simultaneously.  You're  as  free  as  Boccaccio, 
old  son." 

"You're  in  one  of  those  moods  when  it's  impossible  to 
argue  with  you." 

"So  much  the  better.  We  shall  enjoy  our  supper  all  the 
more.  I'm  so  excited  at  the  idea  of  going  back  to  England. 
After  all,  I  shall  have  been  away  nearly  three  years.  I 
shall  find  godchildren  who  can  talk.  Think  of  that. 
Arthur,  don't  you  want  to  go  back?" 


Sylvia    Scarlett  405 

"Yes,  if  I  can  get  a  shop.  I  think  it's  madness  for  me 
to  leave  New  York,  but  I  daren't  let  you  go  alone." 

The  anticipation  of  being  in  England  again  and  of 
putting  to  the  test  her  achievement  could  not  charm  away 
all  Sylvia's  regret  at  leaving  America,  most  of  all  New 
York.  She  owed  to  New  York  this  new  stability  that  she 
discovered  in  her  life.  She  owed  to  some  action  of  New 
York  upon  herself  the  delight  of  inspiration,  the  sweet 
purgatory  of  effort,  the  hope  of  a  successful  end  to  her 
dreams.  It  was  the  only  city  of  which  she  had  ever  taken 
a  formal  farewell,  such  as  she  took  from  the  top  of  the 
Metropolitan  Tower  upon  a  lucid  morning  in  April.  The 
city  lay  beneath,  with  no  magic  of  smoke  to  lend  a  mere- 
tricious romance  to  its  checkered  severity;  a  city  encircled 
with  silver  waters  and  pavilioned  by  huge  skies,  expressing 
modern  humanity,  as  the  great  monuments  of  ancient 
architecture  express  the  mighty  dead. 

"We  too  can  create  our  Parthenons,"  thought  Sylvia,  as 
she  sank  to  earth  in  the  florid  elevator. 

They  crossed  the  Atlantic  on  one  of  the  smaller  Cunard 
liners.  The  voyage  was  uneventful.  Nearly  all  the  pas- 
sengers in  turn  told  Sylvia  why  they  were  not  traveling  by 
one  of  the  large  ships,  but  nobody  suggested  as  a  reason 
that  the  smaller  ships  were  cheaper. 

When  they  reached  England  Arthur  went  to  stay  with 
his  mother  at  Dulwich.  Sylvia  went  to  the  Airdales;  she 
wanted  to  set  her  scheme  in  motion,  but  she  promised  to 
come  and  stay  at  Dulwich  later  on. 

"At  last  you've  come  back,"  Olive  said,  on  the  verge  of 
tears.  "I've  missed  you  dreadfully." 

"Great  Scott!  Look  at  Sylvius  and  Rose!"  Sylvia  ex- 
claimed. "They're  like  two  pigs  made  of  pink  sugar. 
Pity  we  never  thought  of  it  at  the  time,  or  they  could  have 
been  christened  Scarlet  and  Crimson." 

"Darlings,  isn't  godmamma  horrid  to  you?"  said  Olive. 

"Here!  Here!  What  are  you  teaching  them  to  call 
me?" 

"Dat's  godmamma,"  said  Sylvius,  in  a  thick  voice. 

"Dat's  godmamma,"  Rose  echoed. 

"Not  on  your  life,  cullies,"  their  godmother  announced, 
"unless  you  want  a  thick  ear  each." 


406  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Give  me  one,"  said  Sylvius,  stolidly. 

"Give  me  one,"  Rose  echoed. 

"How  can  you  tease  the  poor  darlings  so?"  Olive  ex- 
claimed. 

"Sylvius  will  have  one,"  he  announced,  in  the  same 
thick  monotone. 

"Rose  will  have  one,"  echoed  his  sister. 

Sylvia  handed  her  godson  a  large  painted  ball. 

"Here's  your  thick  ear,  Pork." 

Sylvius  laughed  fatly;  the  ball  and  the  new  name  both 
pleased  him. 

"And  here's  yours,"  she  said,  offering  another  to  Rose, 
who  waited  to  see  what  her  brother  did  with  his  and  then 
proceeded  to  do  the  same  with  the  same  fat  laugh.  Sud- 
denly, however,  her  lips  puckered. 

"What  is  it,  darling?"  her  mother  asked,  anxiously. 

"Rose  wants  to  be  said  Pork." 

"You  didn't  call  her  Pork,"  Olive  translated,  reproach- 
fully, to  Sylvia. 

"Give  me  back  the  ball,"  said  Sylvia.  "Now  then, 
here's  your  thick  ear,  Porka." 

Rose  laughed  ecstatically.  After  two  ornaments  had 
been  broken  Jack  came  in,  and  the  children  retired  with 
their  nurse. 

Sylvia  found  that  family  life  had  not  spoiled  Jack's 
interest  in  that  career  of  hers;  indeed,  he  was  so  much 
excited  by  her  news  that  he  suggested  omitting  for  once 
the  ceremony  of  seeing  the  twins  being  given  their  bath 
in  order  not  to  lose  any  of  the  short  time  available  before 
he  should  have  to  go  down  to  the  theater.  Sylvia,  how- 
ever, would  not  hear  of  any  change  in  the  domestic  order, 
and  reminded  Jack  that  she  was  proposing  to  quarter  her- 
self on  them  for  some  time. 

"I  know,  it's  terrific,"  he  said. 

The  excitement  of  the  bath  was  always  considerable,  but 
this  evening,  with  Sylvia's  assistance,  it  became  acute. 
Sylvius  hit  his  nurse  in  the  eye  with  the  soap,  and  Rose, 
wrought  up  to  a  fever  of  emulation,  managed  to  hurl  the 
sponge  into  the  grate. 

Jack  was  enthusiastic  about  Sylvia's  scheme.  She  was 
not  quite  sure  that  he  understood  exactly  at  what  she  was 


Sylvia    Scarlett  407 

aiming,  but  he  wished  her  so  well  that  in  any  case  his 
criticism  would  have  had  slight  value;  he  gave  instead  his 
devoted  attention,  and  that  seemed  a  pledge  of  success. 
Success!  Success!  it  sounded  like  a  cataract  in  her  ears, 
drowning  every  other  sound.  She  wondered  if  the  passion 
of  her  life  was  to  be  success.  On  no  thoughts  urged  so 
irresistibly  had  she  ever  sailed  to  sleep,  nor  had  she  ever 
wakened  in  such  a  buoyancy,  greeting  the  day  as  a  swim- 
mer greets  the  sea. 

"Now  what  about  the  backing?"  Jack  asked. 

"Backing?  I'll  back  myself.  You'll  be  my  manager. 
I've  enough  to  hire  the  Pierian  Hall  for  a  day  and  a  night. 
I've  enough  to  pay  for  one  scene.  Which  reminds  me  I 
must  get  hold  of  Ronald  Walker.  You'll  sing,  Jack,  two 
songs?  Oh,  and  there's  Arthur  Madden.  He'll  sing,  too." 

"Who's  he?"  Olive  asked. 

"Oh,  didn't  I  tell  you  about  him?"  said  Sylvia,  almost 
too  nonchalantly,  she  feared.  "He's  rather  good.  Quite 
good,  really.  I'll  tell  you  about  him  sometime.  By  the 
way,  I've  talked  so  much  about  myself  and  my  plans  that 
I've  never  asked  about  other  people.  How's  the  countess?" 

Olive  looked  grave.  "We  don't  ever  see  them,  but 
everybody  says  that  Clarehaven  is  going  the  pace  tre- 
mendously." 

"Have  they  retreated  to  Devonshire?" 

"Oh  no!  Didn't  you  hear?  I  thought  I'd  told  you  in 
one  of  my  letters.  He  had  to  sell  the  family  place.  Do 
you  remember  a  man  called  Leopold  Hausberg?" 

"Do  I  not?"  Sylvia  exclaimed.  "He  took  a  flat  once 
for  a  chimpanzee  instead  of  Lily." 

"Well,  he's  become  Lionel  Houston  this  year,  and  he's 
talked  about  with  Dorothy  a  good  deal.  Of  course  he's 
very  rich,  but  I  do  hope  there's  nothing  in  what  people 
say.  Poor  Dorothy!" 

"She'll  survive  even  the  divorce  court,"  Sylvia  said. 
"I  wish  I  knew  what  had  become  of  Lily.  She  might  have 
danced  in  my  show.  I  suppose  it's  too  late  now,  though. 
Poor  Lily!  I  say,  we're  getting  very  compassionate,  you 
and  I,  Olive.  Are  you  and  Jack  going  to  have  any  more 
kids?" 

"Sylvia  darling,"  Olive  exclaimed,  with  a  blush. 


4o8  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Sylvia  had  intended  to  stay  a  week  or  two  with  the 
Airdales,  and,  after  having  set  in  motion  the  preliminaries 
of  her  undertaking,  to  go  down  to  Dulwich  and  visit  Mrs. 
Madden,  but  she  thought  she  would  get  hold  of  Ronnie 
Walker  first,  and  with  this  object  went  to  the  Cafe  Royal, 
where  she  should  be  certain  of  finding  either  him  or  a  friend 
who  would  know  where  he  was. 

Sylvia  had  scarcely  time  to  look  round  her  in  the  swirl  of 
gilt  and  smoke  and  chatter  before  Ronald  Walker  himself, 
wearing  now  a  long  pale  beard,  greeted  her. 

"My  dear  Ronald,  what's  the  matter?  Are  you  tired  of 
women?  You  look  more  like  a  grate  than  a  great  man," 
Sylvia  exclaimed.  "Cut  it  off  and  give  it  to  your  landlady 
to  stuff  her  fireplace  this  summer." 

"What  shall  we  drink?"  he  asked,  imperturbably. 

"I've  been  absinthe  for  so  long  that  really — " 

"It's  a  vermouth  point,"  added  Ronald. 

"Ronnie,  you  devil,  I  can't  go  on,  it's  too  whisky.  Well, 
of  course  after  that  we  ought  both  to  drink  port  and 
brandy.  Don't  you  find  it  difficult  to  clean  your  beard  ?" 

"I'm  not  a  messy  feeder,"  said  Ronnie. 

"You  don't  paint  with  it,  then?" 

"Only  Cubist  pictures." 

Sylvia  launched  out  into  an  account  of  her  work,  and 
demanded  his  help  for  the  painting  of  the  scene. 

"I  want  the  back-cloth  to  be  a  city,  not  to  represent  a 
city,  mark  you,  but  to  be  a  city." 

She  told  him  about  New  York  as  beheld  from  the  Metro- 
politan Tower,  and  exacted  from  the  chosen  painter  the 
ability  to  make  the  audience  think  that. 

"I'm  too  old-fashioned  for  you,  my  dear,"  said  Ronald. 

"Oh,  you,  my  dear  man,  of  course.  If  I  asked  you  for  a 
city,  you'd  give  me  a  view  from  a  Pierrot's  window  of  a 
Harlequin  who'd  stolen  the  first  five  numbers  of  the 
Yellow  Book  from  a  Pantaloon  who  kept  a  second-hand 
bookshop  in  a  street-scene  by  Steinlen,  and  whose  daugh- 
ter, Columbine,  having  died  of  grief  at  being  deserted  by 
the  New  English  Art  Club,  had  been  turned  into  a  book- 
plate. No,  I  want  some  fierce  young  genius  of  to-day." 

Over  their  drinks  they  discussed  possible  candidates; 
finally  Ronald  said  he  would  invite  a  certain  number  of  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  409 

most  representative  and  least  representational  modern 
painters  to  his  studio,  from  whom  Sylvia  might  make  her 
choice.  Accordingly,  two  or  three  days  later  Sylvia  visited 
Ronald  in  Grosvenor  Road.  For  the  moment,  when  she 
entered,  she  thought  that  he  had  been  playing  a  practical 
joke  upon  her,  for  it  seemed  impossible  that  these  ex- 
traordinary people  could  be  real.  The  northerly  light  of 
the  studio,  severe  and  virginal,  was  less  kind  than  the 
feverish  exhalation  of  the  Cafe  Royal. 

"They  are  real?"  she  whispered  to  her  host. 

"Oh  yes,  they're  quite  real,  and  in  deadly  earnest. 
Each  of  them  represents  a  school  and  each  of  them  thinks 
I've  been  converted  to  his  point  of  view.  I'll  introduce 
Morphew." 

He  beckoned  to  a  tall  young  man  in  black,  who  looked 
like  a  rolled-up  umbrella  with  a  jade  handle. 

"Morphew,  this  is  Miss  Scarlett.  She's  nearly  as 
advanced  as  you  are.  Sylvia,  this  is  Morphew,  the 
Azurist." 

Walker  maliciously  withdrew  when  he  had  made  the 
introduction. 

"Ought  I  to  know  what  an  Azurist  is?"  Sylvia  asked. 
She  felt  that  it  was  an  unhappy  opening  for  the  conversa- 
tion, but  she  did  not  want  to  hurt  his  religious  feelings  if 
Azurism  was  a  religion,  and  if  it  was  a  trade  she  might  be 
excused  for  not  knowing  what  it  was,  such  a  rare  trade 
must  it  be. 

Mr.  Morphew  smiled  in  a  superior  way.  "I  think  most 
people  have  heard  about  me  by  now." 

"Ah,  but  I've  been  abroad." 

"Several  of  my  affirmations  have  been  translated  and 
published  in  France,  Germany,  Russia,  Spain,  Italy, 
Sweden,  Hungary,  and  Holland,"  said  Mr.  Morphew,  in  a 
tone  that  seemed  to  imply  that  if  Sylvia  had  not  grasped 
who  he  was  by  now  she  never  would,  in  which  case  it  was 
scarcely  worth  his  while  to  go  on  talking  to  her. 

"Oh  dear!  What  a  pity!"  she  exclaimed.  "I  was  in 
Montenegro  all  last  year,  so  I  must  have  missed  them.  I 
don't  think  you're  known  in  Montenegro  yet.  It's  such  a 
small  country,  I  should  have  been  sure  to  hear  about  any- 
thing like  that. 


410  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Like  what?"  thought  Sylvia,  turning  up  her  mind's 
eyes  to  heaven. 

Mr.  Morphew  was  evidently  not  sure  what  sort  of 
language  was  spoken  in  Montenegro,  and  thought  it  wiser 
to  instruct  Sylvia  than  to  expose  his  own  ignorance. 

"What  color  is  that?"  he  suddenly  demanded,  pointing 
to  the  orange  coverlet  of  a  settee. 

"Orange,"  said  Sylvia.  "Perhaps  it's  inclining  to  some 
shade  of*  brown." 

"Orange!  Brown!"  Mr.  Morphew  scoffed.  "It's 
blue." 

"Oh,  but  it's  not!"  she  contradicted.  "There's  nothing 
blue  about  it." 

"Blue,"  repeated  Mr.  Morphew.  "All  is  blue.  The 
Azurists  deny  that  there  is  anything  but  blue.  Blue,"  he 
continued  in  a  rapt  voice.  "Blue!  I  was  a  Blanchist  at 
first;  but  when  we  quarreled  most  of  the  Blanchists 
followed  me.  I  shall  publish  the  nineteenth  affirmation  of 
the  Azurists  next  week.  If  you  give  me  your  address  I'll 
send  you  a  copy.  We're  going  to  give  the  Ovists  hell  in  a 
new  magazine  that  we're  bringing  out.  We  find  that 
affirmations  are  not  enough." 

"Will  it  be  an  ordinary  magazine?"  Sylvia  asked. 
"Will  you  have  stories,  for  instance?" 

"We  don't  admit  that  stories  exist.  Life-rays  exist. 
There  will  be  life-rays  in  our  magazine." 

"I  suppose  they'll  be  pretty  blue,"  said  Sylvia. 

"All  life-rays  are  blue." 

"I  suppose  you  don't  mind  wet  weather?"  she  sug- 
gested. "  Because  it  must  be  rather  difficult  to  know  when 
it's  going  to  clear  up." 

"There  are  degrees  of  blue,"  Mr.  Morphew  explained. 

"I  see.  Life  isn't  just  one  vast,  reckless  blue.  Well, 
thank  you  very  much  for  being  so  patient  with  my  old- 
fashioned  optical  ideas.  I  do  hope  you'll  go  to  America 
and  tell  them  that  their  leaves  turn  blue  in  autumn.  Any- 
way, you'll  feel  quite  at  home  crossing  the  ocean,  though 
some  people  won't  even  admit  that's  blue." 

Sylvia  left  the  Azurist  and  rejoined  Ronald. 

"Well,"  he  laughed.     "You  look  quite  frightened." 

"My  dear,  I've  just  done  a  bolt  from  the  blue.    You  are 


Sylvia    Scarlett  411 

a  beast  to  rag  my  enthusiasms.  Isn't  there  anybody  here 
whose  serious  view  of  himself  I  can  indorse?" 

"Well,  there's  Pattison,  the  Ovist.  He  maintains  that 
everything  resolves  itself  into  ovals." 

"I  think  I  should  almost  prefer  Azurism,"  said  Sylvia. 
"What  about  the  Blanchists?" 

"Oh,  you  wouldn't  like  them!  They  maintain  that 
there's  no  such  thing  as  color;  their  pictures  depend  on  the 
angle  at  which  they're  hung." 

"But  if  there's  no  such  thing  as  color,  how  can  they 
paint?" 

"They  don't.  Their  canvases  are  blank.  Then  there 
are  the  Combinationists.  They  don't  repudiate  color,  but 
they  repudiate  paint.  The  most  famous  Combinationist 
picture  exhibited  so  far  consisted  of  half  a  match-box,  a 
piece  of  orange-peel,  and  some  sealing-wax,  all  stuck  upon 
a  slip  of  sugar-paper.  The  other  Combinationists  wanted 
to  commit  suicide  because  they  despaired  of  surpassing  it. 
Roger  Cadbury  wrote  a  superb  introduction,  pointing  out 
that  it  must  be  either  liked  or  disliked,  but  that  it  was 
impossible  to  do  both  or  neither.  It  was  that  picture 
which  inspired  Hezekiah  Penny  to  write  what  is  considered 
one  of  his  finest  poems.  You  know  it,  perhaps? 

"Why  do  I  sing? 

There  is  no  reason  why  I  should  continue: 
This  image  of  the  essential  bin  is  better 
Than  the  irritated  uvulas  of  modern  poets. 

That  caused  almost  as  great  sensation  as  the  picture, 
because  some  of  his  fellow-poets  maintained  that  he  had 
no  right  to  speak  for  anybody  but  himself." 

"Who  is  Hezekiah  Penny?"  Sylvia  asked. 

"Hezekiah  Penny  is  a  provincial  poet  who  began  by 
writing  Proven9al  verse." 

"But  this  is  madness,"  Sylvia  exclaimed,  looking  round 
her  at  the  studio,  where  the  representatives  of  modernity 
eyed  one  another  with  surprise  and  distaste  like  unusual 
fish  in  the  tank  of  an  aquarium.  "  Behind  all  this  rubbish 
surely  something  truly  progressive  exists.  You've  deliber- 
ately invited  all  the  charlatans  and  impostors  to  meet  me. 
I  tell  you,  Ronnie,  I  saw  lots  of  pictures  in  New  York  that 


412  Sylvia    Scarlett 

were  eccentric,  but  they  were  striving  to  rediscover  life  in 
painting.  You're  prejudiced  because  you  belong  to  the 
decade  before  all  this,  and  you've  taken  a  delight  in  show- 
ing me  all  the  extravagant  side  of  it.  You  should  emulate 
Tithonus." 

"Who  was  he?'* 

"Now  don't  pretend  you  can't  follow  a  simple  allusion. 
The  gentleman  who  fell  in  love  with  Aurora." 

"Didn't  he  get  rather  tired  of  living  forever?" 

"Oh,  well,  that  was  because  he  grew  a  beard  like  you. 
Don't  nail  my  allusions  to  the  counter;  they're  not  lies." 

"I'll  take  pity  on  you,"  said  Ronnie.  "There  is  quite  a 
clever  youth  whom  I  intended  for  you  from  the  beginning. 
He's  coming  in  later,  when  the  rest  have  gone." 

When  she  and  Ronnie  were  alone  again  and  before 
Lucian  Hope,  the  young  painter,  arrived,  Sylvia,  looking 
through  one  of  his  sketch-books,  came  across  a  series  of 
studies  of  a  girl  in  the  practice-dress  of  dancing;  he  told 
her  it  was  Jenny  Pearl. 

"Maurice  Avery's  Jenny,"  she  murmured.  "What 
happened  to  her?" 

"Didn't  you  hear  about  it?  She  was  killed  by  her 
husband.  It  was  a  horrible  business.  Maurice  went  down 
to  see  her  where  she  lived  in  the  country,  and  this  brute 
shot  her.  It  was  last  summer.  The  papers  were  full  of  it." 

"And  what  happened  to  Maurice?" 

"Oh,  he  nearly  went  off  his  head.  He's  wandering  about 
in  Morocco  probably." 

"Where  I  met  him,"  said  Sylvia. 

"But  didn't  he  tell  you?" 

"Oh,  it  was  before.  More  than  three  years  ago.  We 
talked  about  her." 

Sylvia  shuddered.  One  of  her  improvisations  had  been 
Maurice  Avery;  she  must  burn  it. 

Lucian  Hope  arrived  before  Sylvia  could  ask  any  more 
questions  about  the  horrible  event;  she  was  glad  to  escape 
from  the  curiosity  that  would  have  turned  it  into  a  tale  of 
the  police-court.  The  new-comer  was  not  more  than  twen- 
ty-two, perhaps  less — too  young,  at  any  rate,  to  have 
escaped  from  the  unconventionality  of  artistic  attire  that 
stifles  all  personality.  But  he  had  squirrel's  eyes,  and  was 


Sylvia    Scarlett  413 

not  really  like  an  undertaker.  He  was  shy,  too,  so  shy  that 
Sylvia  wondered  how  he  could  tolerate  being  stared  at  in 
the  street  on  account  of  his  odd  appearance.  She  would 
have  liked  to  ask  him  what  pleasure  he  derived  from  such 
mimicry  of  a  sterile  and  professional  distinction,  but  she 
feared  to  hurt  his  young  vanity;  moreover,  she  was  dis- 
armed by  those  squirrel's  eyes,  so  sharp  and  bright  even  in 
the  falling  dusk.  The  three  of  them  talked  restlessly  for  a 
while,  and  Sylvia,  seeing  that  Ronald  was  preparing  to 
broach  the  subject  for  which  they  were  met,  anticipated 
him  with  a  call  for  attention,  and  began  one  of  her  impro- 
visations. It  was  of  Concetta  lost  in  a  greater  city  than 
Granada.  By  the  silence  that  followed  she  knew  that  her 
companions  had  cared  for  it,  and  she  changed  to  Mrs. 
Gainsborough.  Then  she  finished  up  with  three  of  the 
poems. 

"Could  you  paint  me  a  scene  for  that?"  she  asked, 
quickly,  to  avoid  any  comment. 

"Oh,  rather!"  replied  the  young  man,  very  eagerly; 
though  it  was  nearly  dark  now,  she  could  see  his  eyes  flash- 
ing real  assurance. 

They  all  three  dined  together  that  evening,  and  Lucian 
Hope,  ever  since  Sylvia  had  let  him  know  that  she  stood 
beside  him  to  conquer  the  world,  lost  his  early  shyness  and 
talked  volubly  of  what  she  wanted  and  what  he  wanted  to 
do.  Ronald  Walker  presided  in  the  background  of  the 
ardent  conversation,  and  as  they  came  out  of  the  restau- 
rant he  took  Sylvia's  arm  for  a  moment. 

"All  right?" 

"Quite  all  right,  thanks." 

"So's  your  show  going  to  be.  Not  so  entirely  modern 
as  you  gave  me  to  suppose.  But  that's  not  a  great  fault." 

Sylvia  and  Lucian  Hope  spent  a  good  deal  of  time  to- 
gether, so  much  was  there  to  talk  about  in  connection  with 
the  great  enterprise.  She  brought  him  to  the  Airdales* 
that  he  might  meet  Jack,  who  was  supposed  to  have  charge 
of  the  financial  arrangements.  The  sight  of  the  long- 
haired young  man  made  Sylvius  cry,  and,  as  a  matter  of 
course,  Rose,  also,  which  embarrassed  Lucian  Hope  a  good 
deal,  especially  when  he  had  to  listen  to  an  explanation  of 
himself  by  Olive  for  the  children's  consolation. 


414  Sylvia    Scarlett 

'He's  a  gollywog,"  Sylvius  howled. 
'He's  a  gollywog,"  Rose  echoed. 
'He's  turn  to  gobble  us,"  Sylvius  bellowed. 
'To  gobble  us,  to  gobble  us,"  Rose  wailed. 
'He's  not  a  gollywog,  darlings,"  their  mother  declared. 
"He  makes  pretty  pictures,  oh,  such  pretty  pictures  of— 

"He  is  a  gollywog,"  choked  Sylvius,  in  an  ecstasy  of 
rage  and  fear. 

"A  gollywog,  a  gollywog,"  Rose  insisted. 

Their  mother  changed  her  tactics.  "But  he's  a  kind 
gollywog.  Oh,  such  a  kind  gollywog,  the  kindest,  nicest 
gollywog  that  was  ever  thought  of." 

"He  is — ent,"  both  children  proclaimed.    "He's  bad!" 

"Don't  you  think  I'd  better  go?"  asked  the  painter. 
"I  think  it  must  be  my  hair  that's  upsetting  them." 

He  started  toward  the  door,  but,  unfortunately,  he  was 
on  the  wrong  side  of  the  children,  who,  seeing  him  make  a 
move  in  their  direction,  set  up  such  an  appalling  yell  that 
the  poor  young  man  drew  back  in  despair.  In  the  middle 
of  this  the  maid  entered,  announcing  Mr.  Arthur  Madden, 
who  followed  close  upon  her  heel's.  Sylvius  and  Rose  were 
by  this  time  obsessed  with  the  idea  of  an  invasion  by  an 
army  of  gollywogs,  and  Arthur's  pleasant  face  took  on  for 
them  the  dreaded  lineaments  of  the  foe.  Both  children 
clung  shrieking  to  their  mother's  skirts.  Sylvia  and  Jack 
were  leaning  back,  incapable  through  laughter.  Arthur 
and  Lucian  Hope  surveyed  miserably  the  scene  they  had 
created.  At  last  the  nurse  arrived  to  rescue  the  twins,  and 
they  were  carried  away  without  being  persuaded  to  change 
their  minds  about  the  inhuman  nature  of  the  two  visitors. 

Arthur  apologized  for  worrying  Sylvia,  but  his  mother 
was  so  anxious  to  know  when  she  was  coming  down  to 
Dulwich,  and  as  he  had  been  up  in  town  seeing  about  an 
engagement,  he  had  not  been  able  to  resist  coming  to  visit 
her. 

Sylvia  felt  penitent  for  having  abandoned  Arthur  so 
completely  since  they  had  arrived  in  England,  and  she  told 
him  she  would  go  back  with  him  that  very  afternoon. 

"Oh,  but  Miss  Scarlett,"  protested  Lucian,  "don't 
you  remember?  We  arranged  to  explore  Limehouse 
to-morrow." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  415 

Arthur  looked  at  the  painter  very  much  as  if  he  were 
indeed  the  gollywog  for  which  he  had  just  been  taken. 

"I  don't  want  to  interfere  with  previous  arrangements," 
he  said,  with  such  a  pathetic  haughtiness  that  Sylvia  had 
not  the  heart  to  wound  his  dignity,  and  told  Lucian  Hope 
that  the  expedition  to  Limehouse  must  be  postponed.  The 
young  painter  looked  disconsolate  and  Arthur  blossomed 
from  his  fading.  However,  Lucian  had  the  satisfaction  of 
saying,  in  a  mysterious  voice,  to  Sylvia  before  he  went: 

"Well,  then,  while  you're  away  I'll  get  on  with  it." 

It  was  not  until  they  were  half-way  to  Dulwich  in  the 
train  that  Arthur  asked  Sylvia  what  he  was  going  to  get 
on  with. 

"My  scene,"  she  said. 

"What  scene?" 

"Arthur,  don't  be  stupid.    The  set  for  my  show." 

"You're  not  going  to  let  a  youth  like  that  paint  a  set 
for  you?  You're  mad.  What  experience  has  he  had?" 

"None.  That's  exactly  why  I  chose  him.  I'm  pro- 
viding the  experience." 

"Have  you  known  him  long?"  Arthur  demanded. 
"You  can't  have  known  him  very  long.  He  must  have 
been  at  school  when  you  left  England." 

"Don't  be  jealous,"  said  Sylvia. 

"Jealous?    Of  him?    Huh!" 

Mrs.  Madden  had  changed  more  than  Sylvia  expected. 
Arthur  had  seemed  so  little  altered  that  she  was  surprised 
to  see  his  mother  with  white  hair,  for  she  could  scarcely  be 
fifty-five  yet.  The  drawing-room  of  the  little  house  in 
Dulwich  recalled  vividly  the  drawing-room  of  the  house  in 
Hampstead;  nor  had  Mrs.  Madden  bought  herself  a  new 
piano  with  the  fifty  pounds  that  was  cabled  back  to  her 
from  Sulphurville.  It  suddenly  occurred  to  Sylvia  that 
this  was  the  first  time  she  had  seen  her  since  she  ran  away 
with  Arthur,  fifteen  years  ago,  and  she  felt  that  she  ought 
to  apologize  for  that  behavior  now;  but,  after  all,  Mrs. 
Madden  had  run  away  herself  once  upon  a  time  with  her 
father's  groom  and  could  scarcely  have  been  greatly  aston- 
ished at  Arthur's  elopement. 

"You  have  forgiven  me  for  carrying  him  off  from  Hamp- 
stead ?"  she  asked,  with  a  smile. 

27 


416  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Mrs.  Madden  laughed  gently.  "Yes,  I  was  frightened 
at  the  time.  But  in  the  end  it  did  Arthur  good,  I  think. 
It's  been  such  a  pleasure  to  me  to  hear  how  successful  he's 
been  lately."  She  looked  at  Sylvia  with  an  expression  of 
marked  sympathy. 

After  supper  Mrs.  Madden  came  up  to  Sylvia's  room 
and,  taking  her  hand,  said,  in  her  soft  voice,  "Arthur  has 
told  me  all  about  you  two." 

Sylvia  flushed  and  pulled  her  hand  away.  "He's  no 
business  to  tell  you  anything  about  me,"  she  said, 
hotly. 

"You  mustn't  be  angry,  Sylvia.  He  made  it  quite  clear 
that  you  hadn't  quite  made  up  your  mind  yet.  Poor  boy," 
she  added,  with  a  sigh. 

Sylvia,  when  she  understood  that  Arthur  had  not  said 
anything  about  their  past,  had  a  strong  desire  to  tell  Mrs. 
Madden  that  she  had  lived  with  him  for  a  year.  She  re- 
sented the  way  she  had  said  "poor  boy."  She  checked  the 
impulse  and  assured  her  that  if  Arthur  had  spoken  of  their 
marriage  he  had  had  no  right  to  do  so.  It  really  was  most 
improbable  that  she  should  marry  him;  oh,  but  most 
improbable. 

"You  always  spoke  very  severely  about  love  when  you 
were  a  little  girl.  Do  you  remember?  You  must  forgive  a 
mother,  but  I  must  tell  you  that  I  believe  Arthur's  happi- 
ness depends  upon  your  marrying  him.  He  talks  of 
nothing  else  and  makes  such  plans  for  the  future." 

"He  makes  too  many  plans,"  Sylvia  said,  severely. 

"Ah,  there  soon  comes  a  time  when  one  ceases  to  make 
plans,"  Mrs.  Madden  sighed.  "One  is  reduced  to  ex- 
pedients. But  now  that  you're  a  woman,  and  I  can  easily 
believe  that  you're  the  clever  woman  Arthur  says  you  are, 
for  you  gave  every  sign  of  it  when  you  were  young — now 
that  you're  a  woman,  I  do  hope  you'll  be  a  merciful  wom- 
an. It's  such  a  temptation — you  must  forgive  my  plain 
speaking — it's  such  a  temptation  to  keep  a  man  like  Arthur 
hanging  on.  You  must  have  noticed  how  young  he  is  still 
— to  all  intents  and  purposes  quite  a  boy;  and  believe  me 
he  has  the  same  romantic  adoration  for  you  and  your 
wonderfulness  as  he  had  when  he  was  seventeen.  Don't, 
I  beg  of  you,  treat  such  devotion  too  lightly." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  417 

Sylvia  could  not  keep  silent  under  this  unjustified 
imputation  of  heartlessness,  and  broke  out: 

"I'm  sure  you'll  admit  that  Arthur  has  given  quite  a 
wrong  idea  of  me  when  I  tell  you  that  we  lived  together 
for  a  year;  and  you  must  remember  that  I've  been  married 
already  and  know  what  it  means.  Arthur  has  no  right  to 
complain  of  me." 

"Oh,  Sylvia,  I'm  sorry!"  Mrs.  Madden  almost  whis- 
pered. "Oh  dear!  how  could  Arthur  do  such  a  thing?" 

"Because  I  made  him,  of  course.  Now  you  must  forgive 
me  if  I  say  something  that  hurts  your  feelings,  but  I  must 
say  it.  When  you  ran  away  with  your  husband,  you  must 
have  made  him  do  it.  You  must  have  done." 

"Good  gracious  me!"  Mrs.  Madden  exclaimed.  "I 
suppose  I  did.  I  never  looked  at  it  in  that  light  before. 
You've  made  me  feel  quite  ashamed  of  my  behavior. 
Quite  embarrassed.  And  I  suppose  everybody  has  always 
blamed  me  entirely;  but  because  my  husband  was  one  of 
my  father's  servants  I  always  used  to  be  defending  him. 
I  never  thought  of  defending  myself." 

Sylvia  was  sorry  for  stirring  up  in  Mrs.  Madden's  placid 
mind  old  storms.  It  was  painful  to  see  this  faded  gentle- 
woman in  the  little  suburban  bedroom,  blushing  nervously 
at  the  unlady-like  behavior  of  long  ago.  Presently  Mrs. 
Madden  pulled  herself  up  and  said,  with  a  certain  decision: 

"Yes,  but  I  did  marry  him." 

"Yes,  but  you  hadn't  been  married  already.  You 
hadn't  knocked  round  half  the  globe  for  twenty-eight 
years.  It's  no  good  my  pretending  to  be  shocked  at  myself. 
I  don't  care  a  bit  what  anybody  thinks  about  me,  and, 
anyway,  it's  done  now." 

"Surely  you'd  be  happier  if  you  married  Arthur  after 
— after  that,"  Mrs.  Madden  suggested. 

"  But  I'm  not  in  the  least  unhappy.  I  can't  say  whether 
I  shall  marry  Arthur  until  I've  given  my  performance.  I 
can't  say  what  effect  either  success  or  failure  will  have  on 
me.  My  whole  mind  is  concentrated  in  the  Pierian  Hall 
next  October." 

"I'm  afraid  I  can't  understand  this  modern  way  of 
looking  at  things." 

"  But  there's  nothing  modern  about  my  point  of  view, 


4i8  Sylvia    Scarlett 

Mrs.  Madden.  There's  nothing  modern  about  the  egotism 
of  an  artist.  Arthur  is  as  free  as  I  am.  He  has  his  own 
career  to  think  about.  He  does  think  about  it  a  great 
deal.  He's  radically  much  more  interested  in  that  than  in 
marrying  me.  The  main  point  is  that  he's  free  at  present. 
From  the  moment  I  promise  to  marry  him  and  he  accepts 
that  promise  he  won't  be  free.  Nor  shall  I.  It  wouldn't 
be  fair  on  either  of  us  to  make  that  promise  now,  because 
I  must  know  what  October  is  going  to  bring  forth." 

"Well,  I  call  it  very  modern.  When  I  was  young  we 
looked  at  marriage  as  the  most  important  event  in  a  girl's 
life." 

"But  you  didn't,  dear  Mrs.  Madden.  You,  or  rather 
your  contemporaries,  regarded  marriage  as  a  path  to  free- 
dom— social  freedom,  that  is.  Your  case  was  exceptional. 
You  fell  passionately  in  love  with  a  man  beneath  you,  as 
the  world  counts  it.  You  married  him,  and  what  was  the 
result?  You  were  cut  off  by  your  relations  as  utterly  as  if 
you  had  become  the  concubine  of  a  Hottentot." 

"Oh,  Sylvia  dear,  what  an  uncomfortable  comparison!" 

"Marriage  to  your  contemporaries  was  a  social  ob- 
servance. I'm  not  religious,  but  I  regard  marriage  as  so 
sacred  that,  because  I've  been  divorced  and  because,  so 
far  as  I  know,  my  husband  is  still  alive,  I  have  something 
like  religious  qualms  about  marrying  again.  It  takes  a 
cynic  to  be  an  idealist;  the  sentimentalist  gets  left  at  the 
first  fence.  It's  just  because  I'm  fond  of  Arthur  in  a 
perfectly  normal  way  when  I'm  not  immersed  in  my  am- 
bition that  I  even  contemplate  the  notion  of  marrying 
him.  I've  got  a  perfectly  normal  wish  to  have  children 
and  a  funny  little  house  of  my  own.  So  far  as  I  know  at 
present,  I  should  like  Arthur  to  be  the  father  of  my  chil- 
dren. But  it's  got  to  be  an  equal  business.  Personally 
I  think  that  the  Turks  are  wiser  about  women  than  we  are; 
I  think  the  majority  of  women  are  only  fit  for  the  harem 
and  I'm  not  sure  that  the  majority  wouldn't  be  much 
happier  under  such  conditions.  The  incurable  vanity  of 
man,  however,  has  removed  us  from  our  seclusion  to 
admire  his  antics,  and  it's  too  late  to  start  shutting  us  up 
in  a  box  now.  Woman  never  thought  of  equality  with 
man  until  he  put  the  notion  into  her  head." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  419 

"I  think  perhaps  supper  may  be  ready,"  Mrs.  Madden 
said.  "It  all  sounds  very  convincing  as  you  speak,  but  I 
can't  help  feeling  that  you'd  be  happier  if  you  wouldn't 
take  everything  to  pieces  to  look  at  the  works.  Things 
hardly  ever  go  so  well  again  afterward.  Oh  dear,  I  wish 
you  hadn't  lived  together  first." 

"It  breaks  the  ice  of  the  wedding-cake,  doesn't  it?" 
said  Sylvia. 

"And  I  wish  you  wouldn't  make  such  bitter  remarks. 
You  don't  really  mean  what  you  say.  I'm  sure  supper 
must  be  ready." 

"Oh,  but  I  do,"  Sylvia  insisted,  as  they  passed  out  into 
the  narrow  little  passage  and  down  the  narrow  stairs  into 
the  little  dining-room.  Nevertheless,  in  Sylvia's  mind 
there  was  a  kindliness  toward  this  little  house,  almost  a 
tenderness,  and  far  away  at  the  back  of  her  imagination 
was  the  vision  of  herself  established  in  just  such  another 
little  house. 

"But  even  the  Albert  Memorial  would  look  all  right 
from  the  wrong  end  of  a  telescope,"  she  said  to  herself. 

One  thing  was  brought  home  very  vividly  during  her 
stay  in  Dulwich,  which  was  the  difference  between  what 
she  had  deceived  herself  into  thinking  was  that  first 
maternal  affection  she  had  felt  for  Arthur  and  the  true 
maternal  love  of  his  mother.  Whenever  she  had  helped 
Arthur  in  any  way,  she  had  always  been  aware  of  enjoying 
the  sensation  of  her  indispensableness;  it  had  been  an 
emotion  altogether  different  from  this  natural  selfishness 
of  the  mother;  it  was  really  one  that  had  always  reflected 
a  kind  of  self-conscious  credit  upon  herself.  Here  in  Dul- 
wich, with  this  aspect  of  her  affection  for  Arthur  com- 
pletely overshadowed,  Sylvia  was  able  to  ask  herself  more 
directly  if  she  loved  him  in  the  immemorial  way  of  love; 
and  though  she  could  not  arrive  at  a  finally  positive  con- 
clusion, she  was  strengthened  in  her  resolve  not  to  let  him 
go.  Arthur  himself  was  more  in  love  with  her  than  he  had 
ever  been,  and  she  thought  that  perhaps  this  was  due  to 
that  sudden  and  disquieting  withdrawal  of  herself;  in  the 
midst  of  possession  he  had  been  dispossessed,  and  until  he 
could  pierce  her  secret  reasons  he  would  inevitably  remain 
deeply  in  love,  even  to  the  point  of  being  jealous  of  a  boy 


420  Sylvia    Scarlett 

like  Lucian  Hope.  Sylvia  understood  Arthur's  having 
refused  an  engagement  to  tour  as  juvenile  lead  in  a  success- 
ful musical  piece  and  his  unwillingness  to  leave  her  alone 
in  town;  he  was  rewarded,  too,  for  his  action,  because 
shortly  afterward  he  obtained  a  good  engagement  in  Lon- 
don to  take  the  place  of  a  singer  who  had  retired  from  the 
caste  of  the  Frivolity  Theater.  At  that  rate  he  would  soon 
find  himself  at  the  Vanity  Theater  itself. 

In  June  Sylvia  went  back  to  the  Airdales',  and  soon 
afterward  took  rooms  near  them  in  West  Kensington.  It 
was  impossible  to  continue  indefinitely  to  pretend  that 
Arthur  and  herself  were  mere  theatrical  acquaintances, 
and  one  day  Olive  asked  Sylvia  if  she  intended  to  marry 
him. 

"What  do  you  advise?"  Sylvia  asked.  "There's  a 
triumph,  dearest  Olive.  Have  I  ever  asked  your  advice 
before?" 

"I  like  him;  Jack  likes  him,  too,  and  says  that  he  ought 
to  get  on  fast  now;  but  I  don't  know.  Well,  he's  not  the 
sort  of  man  I  expected  you  to  marry." 

"You've  had  an  ideal  for  me  all  the  time,"  Sylvia  ex- 
claimed. "And  you've  never  told  me." 

"Oh  no,  I've  never  had  anybody  definite  in  my  mind, 
but  I  think  I  should  be  able  to  say  at  once  if  the  man 
you  had  chosen  was  the  right  one.  Don't  ask  me  to 
describe  him,  because  I  couldn't  do  it.  You  used  to  tease 
me  about  marrying  a  curly-headed  actor,  but  Arthur 
Madden  seems  to  me  much  more  of  a  curly-headed  actor 
than  Jack  is." 

"In  fact,  you  thoroughly  disapprove  of  poor  Arthur?" 
Sylvia  pressed. 

"Oh  dear,  no!  Oh,  not  at  all!  Please  don't  think 
that.  I'm  only  anxious  that  you  shouldn't  throw  your- 
self away." 

"Remnants  always  go  cheap,"  said  Sylvia.  "However, 
don't  worry.  I'll  be  quite  sure  of  myself  before  I  marry 
anybody  again." 

The  summer  passed  away  quickly  in  a  complexity  of 
arrangements  for  the  opening  performance  at  the  Pierian 
Hall.  Sylvia  stayed  three  or  four  times  at  Dulwich  and 
grew  very  fond  of  Mrs.  Madden,  who  never  referred  again 


Sylvia    Scarlett  421 

to  the  subject  of  marriage.  She  also  went  up  to  Warwick- 
shire with  Olive  and  the  children,  much  to  the  pleasure  of 
Mr.  Fanshawe,  who  was  now  writing  a  supplementary 
volume  called  More  Warwickshire  Worthies.  In  London 
she  scarcely  met  any  old  friends;  indeed,  she  went  out  of 
her  way  to  avoid  people  like  the  Clarehavens,  because  they 
would  not  have  been  interested  in  what  she  was  doing. 
By  this  time  Sylvia  had  reached  the  point  of  considering 
everybody  either  for  the  interest  and  belief  he  evinced  in 
her  success  or  by  the  use  he  could  be  to  her  in  securing  it. 
The  first  rapturous  egoism  of  Arthur's  own  success  in 
London  had  worn  off  with  time,  and  he  was  able  to  devote 
himself  entirely  to  running  about  for  Sylvia,  which 
gradually  made  her  regard  him  more  and  more  as  a  fixture. 
As  for  Lucian  Hope,  he  thought  of  nothing  but  the  great 
occasion,  and  would  have  fought  anybody  who  had  vent- 
ured to  cast  a  breath  of  doubt  upon  the  triumph  at  hand. 
The  set  that  he  had  painted  was  exactly  what  Sylvia  re- 
quired, and  though  both  Arthur  and  Jack  thought  it  would 
distract  the  audience's  attention  by  puzzling  them,  they 
neither  of  them  on  Sylvia's  account  criticized  it  at  all 
harshly. 

At  last  in  mid-October  the  very  morning  of  the  day 
arrived,  so  long  anticipated  with  every  kind  of  discussion 
that  its  superficial  resemblance  to  other  mornings  seemed 
heartless  and  unnatural.  It  was  absurd  that  a  milkman's 
note  should  be  the  same  as  yesterday,  that  servants  should 
shake  mats  on  front-door  steps  as  usual,  and  that  the  maid 
who  knocked  at  Sylvia's  door  should  not  break  down 
beneath  the  weightiness  of  her  summons.  Nor,  when 
Sylvia  looked  out  of  the  window,  were  Jack  and  Arthur 
and  Ronald  and  Lucian  pacing  with  agitated  steps  the 
pavement  below,  an  absence  of  enthusiasm,  at  any  rate 
on  the  part  of  Arthur  and  Lucian,  that  hurt  her  feelings, 
until  she  thought  for  a  moment  how  foolishly  unreasonable 
she  was  being. 

As  soon  as  Sylvia  was  dressed  she  went  round  to  the 
Airdales';  everybody  she  met  on  the  way  inspired  her 
with  a  longing  to  confide  in  him  the  portentousness  of  the 
day,  and  she  found  herself  speculating  whether  several 
business  men,  who  were  hurrying  to  catch  the  nine-o'clock 


422  Sylvia    Scarlett 

train,  had  possibly  an  intention  of  visiting  the  Pierian  Hall 
that  afternoon.  She  was  extremely  annoyed  to  find,  when 
she  reached  the  Airdales'  house,  that  neither  Jack  nor 
Olive  was  up. 

"Do  they  know  the  time?"  she  demanded  of  the 
maid,  in  a  scandalized  voice.  "Their  clock  must  have 
stopped." 

"Oh  no,  miss,  I  don't  think  so.  Breakfast  is  at  ten,  as 
usual.  There's  Mr.  Airdale's  dressing-room  bell  going 
now,  miss.  That  '11  be  for  his  shaving-water.  Shall  I  say 
you're  waiting  to  see  him?" 

What  a  ridiculous  time  to  begin  shaving,  Sylvia  thought. 

"Yes,  please,"  she  added,  aloud.  "Or  no,  don't  bother 
him;  I'll  come  back  at  ten  o'clock." 

Sylvia  saw  more  of  the  streets  of  West  Kensington  in 
that  hour  than  she  had  ever  seen  of  them  before,  and 
decided  that  the  neighborhood  was  impossible.  Nothing 
so  intolerably  monotonous  as  these  rows  of  stupid  and 
meaningless  houses  had  ever  been  designed.  One  after 
another  of  them  blinked  at  her  in  the  autumnal  sunshine 
with  a  fatuous  complacency  that  made  her  long  to  ring  all 
the  bells  in  the  street.  Presently  she  found  herself  by  the 
play-fields  of  St.  James's  School,  where  the  last  boys  were 
hurrying  across  the  grass  like  belated  ants.  She  looked  at 
the  golden  clock  in  the  school-buildings — half  past  nine. 
In  five  hours  and  a  half  she  would  be  waiting  for  the 
curtain  to  go  up;  in  seven  hours  and  a  half  the  audience 
would  be  wondering  if  it  should  have  tea  in  Bond  Street  or 
cross  Piccadilly  and  walk  down  St.  James's  Street  to 
Rumpelmayer's.  This  problem  of  the  audience  began  to 
worry  Sylvia.  She  examined  the  alternatives  with  a  really 
anxious  gravity.  If  it  went  to  Rumpelmayer's  it  would 
have  to  walk  back  to  the  Dover  Street  Tube,  which  would 
mean  recrossing  Piccadilly;  on  the  other  hand,  it  would 
be  on  the  right  side  for  the  omnibuses.  On  the  other  hand, 
it  would  find  Rumpelmayer's  full,  because  other  audiences 
would  have  arrived  before  it,  invading  the  tea-shop  from 
Pall  Mall.  Sylvia  grew  angry  at  the  thought  of  these 
other  audiences  robbing  her  audience  of  its  tea — her 
audience,  some  members  of  which  would  have  read  in  the 
paper  this  morning: 


Sylvia    Scarlett  423 

PIERIAN  HALL. 

This    afternoon    at   3    p.  m. 

SYLVIA  SCARLETT 

IN 

IMPROVISATIONS 

and  would  actually  have  paid,  some  of  them,  as  much  as 
seven  shillings  and  sixpence  to  see  Sylvia  Scarlett.  Seven 
hours  and  a  half:  seven  shillings  and  sixpence:  7^2  plus 
1^/2  made  fifteen.  When  she  was  fifteen  she  had  met 
Arthur.  Sylvia's  mind  rambled  among  the  omens  of 
numbers,  and  left  her  audience  still  undecided  between 
Bond  Street  and  Rumpelmayer's,  left  it  upon  the  steps  of 
the  Pierian  Hall,  the  sport  of  passing  traffic,  hungry, 
thirsty,  homesick.  In  seven  and  a  half  hours  she  would 
know  the  answer  to  that  breathless  question  asked  a  year 
ago  in  Vermont.  To  think  that  the  exact  spot  on  which 
she  had  stood  when  she  asked  was  existing  at  this  moment 
in  Vermont!  In  seven  and  a  half  hours,  no,  in  seven  hours 
and  twenty-five  minutes;  the  hands  were  moving  on.  It 
was  really  terrible  how  little  people  regarded  the  flight  of 
time;  the  very  world  might  come  to  an  end  in  seven  hours 
and  twenty-five  minutes. 

"Have  you  seen  Sylvia  Scarlett  yet?" 

"No,  we  intended  to  go  yesterday,  but  there  were  no 
seats  left.  They  say  she's  wonderful." 

"Oh,  my  dear,  she's  perfectly  amazing!  Of  course  it's 
something  quite  new.  You  really  must  go." 

"Who  is  she  like?" 

"Oh,  she's  not  like  anybody  else.  I'm  told  she's  half 
French." 

"Oh,  really!    How  interesting." 

"Good  morning!    Have  you  used  Pear's  soap?" 

"V-vi-vin-vino-vinol-vinoli-vinolia." 

Sylvia  pealed  the  Airdales'  bell,  and  found  Jack  in  the 
queer  mixed  costume  which  a  person  wears  on  the  morning 
of  an  afternoon  that  will  be  celebrated  by  his  best  tail-coat. 


424  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"My  dear  girl,  you  really  mustn't  get  so  excited,"  he 
protested,  when  he  saw  Sylvia's  manner. 

"Oh,  Jack,  do  you  think  I  shall  be  a  success?" 

"Of  course  you  will.  Now,  do,  for  goodness'  sake,  drink  a 
cup  of  coffee  or  something." 

Sylvia  found  that  she  was  hungry  enough  to  eat  even  an 
egg,  which  created  a  domestic  crisis,  because  Sylvius  and 
Rose  quarreled  over  which  of  them  was  to  have  the  top. 
Finally  it  was  adjusted  by  awarding  the  top  to  Sylvius,  but 
by  allowing  Rose  to  turn  the  empty  egg  upside  down  for 
the  exquisite  pleasure  of  watching  Sylvia  tap  it  with 
ostentatious  greed,  only  to  find  that  there  was  nothing 
inside,  after  all,  an  operation  that  Sylvius  watched  with 
critical  jealousy  and  Rose  saluted  with  ecstatic  joy.  Syl- 
via's disappointment  was  so  beautifully  violent  that 
Sylvius  regretted  the  material  choice  he  had  made,  and 
wanted  Sylvia  to  eat  another  egg,  of  which  Rose  might 
eat  the  top  and  he  offer  the  empty  shell;  but  it  was  too 
late,  and  Sylvius  learned  that  often  the  shadow  is  better 
than  the  substance. 

It  had  been  decided  in  the  end  that  Jack  should  confine 
himself  to  the  cares  of  general  management,  and  Arthur 
was  left  without  a  rival.  Sylvia  had  insisted  that  he  should 
only  sing  old  English  folk-songs,  a  decision  which  he  had 
challenged  at  first  on  the  ground  that  he  required  the 
advertisement  of  more  modern  songs,  and  that  Sylvia's 
choice  was  not  going  to  help  him. 

"You're  not  singing  to  help  yourself,"  she  had  told  him. 
"You're  singing  to  help  me." 

In  addition  to  Arthur  there  was  a  girl  whom  Lucian 
Hope  had  discovered,  a  delicate  creature  with  red  hair, 
whose  chief  claim  to  employment  was  that  she  was  starv- 
ing, though  incidentally  she  had  a  very  sweet  and  pure 
soprano  voice.  Finally  there  was  an  Irish  pianist  whose 
technique  and  good  humor  were  alike  unassailable. 

Before  the  curtain  went  up,  Sylvia  could  think  of  noth- 
ing but  the  improvisations  that  she  ought  to  have  invented 
instead  of  the  ones  that  she  had.  It  was  a  strain  upon  her 
common  sense  to  prevent  her  from  canceling  the  whole 
performance  and  returning  its  money  to  the  audience. 
The  more  she  contemplated  what  she  was  going  to  do  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  425 

more  she  viewed  the  undertaking  as  a  fraud  upon  the 
public.  There  had  never  been  any  chicane  like  the  chicane 
she  was  presently  going  to  commit.  What  was  that  noise? 
Who  had  given  the  signal  to  O'Hea?  What  in  hell's  name 
did  he  think  he  was  doing  at  the  piano?  The  sound  of  the 
music  wras  like  water  running  into  one's  bath  while  one  was 
lying  in  bed — nothing  could  stop  it  from  overflowing 
presently.  Nothing  could  stop  the  curtain  from  rising. 
At  what  a  pace  he  was  playing  that  Debussy!  He  was 
showing  off,  the  fool!  A  ridiculous  joke  came  into  her 
mind  that  she  kept  on  repeating  while  the  music  flowed: 
"Many  a  minim  makes  a  maxim.  Many  a  minim  makes  a 
maxim."  How  cold  it  was  in  the  dressing-room,  and  the 
music  was  getting  quicker  and  quicker.  There  was  a 
knock  at  the  door.  It  was  Arthur.  How  nice  he  looked 
with  that  red  carnation  in  his  buttonhole. 

"How  nice  you  look,  Arthur,  in  that  buttonhole." 

The  flower  became  tremendously  important;  it  seemed 
to  Sylvia  that,  if  she  could  go  on  flattering  the  flower, 
O'Hea  would  somehow  be  kept  at  the  piano. 

"Well,  don't  pull  it  to  pieces,"  said  Arthur,  ruthfully. 
But  it  was  too  late;  the  petals  were  scattered  on  the  floor 
like  drops  of  blood. 

"Oh,  I'm  sorry!  Come  along  back  to  my  dressing- 
room.  I'll  give  you  another  flower." 

"No,  no;  there  isn't  time  now.  Wait  till  you  come  off 
after  your  first  set." 

Now  it  was  seeming  the  most  urgent  thing  in  the  world 
to  find  another  flower  for  Arthur's  buttonhole.  At  all 
cost  the  rise  of  that  curtain  must  be  delayed.  But  Arthur 
had  brought  her  on  the  stage  and  the  notes  were  racing 
toward  the  death  of  the  piece.  It  was  absurd  of  O'Hea  to 
have  chosen  Debussy;  the  atmosphere  required  a  ballade 
of  Chopin,  or,  better  still,  Schumann's  Noveletten.  He 
could  have  played  all  the  Noveletten.  Oh  dear,  what 
a  pity  she  had  not  thought  of  making  that  suggestion. 
The  piano  would  have  been  scarcely  half-way  through 
by  now. 

Suddenly  there  was  silence.  Then  there  followed  the 
languid  applause  of  an  afternoon  audience  for  an  unim- 
portant part  of  the  program. 


426  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"He's  stopped,"  Sylvia  exclaimed,  in  horror.  "What 
has  happened?" 

She  turned  to  Arthur  in  despair,  but  he  had  hurried  off 
the  stage.  Lucian  Hope's  painted  city  seemed  to  press 
forward  and  stifle  her;  she  moved  down-stage  to  escape  it. 
The  curtain  went  up  and  she  recoiled  as  from  a  chasm  at 
her  feet.  Why  on  earth  was  O'Hea  sitting  in  that  idiotic 
attitude,  as  if  he  were  going  to  listen  to  a  sermon,  looking 
down  like  that,  with  his  right  arm  supporting  his  left 
elbow  and  his  left  hand  propping  up  his  chin?  How  hot 
the  footlights  were!  She  hoped  nothing  had  happened,  and 
looked  round  in  alarm;  but  the  fireman  was  standing  quite 
calmly  in  the  wings.  Just  as  Sylvia  was  deciding  that  her 
voice  could  not  possibly  escape  from  her  throat,  which  had 
closed  upon  it  like  a  pair  of  pincers,  the  voice  tore  itself 
free  and  went  traveling  out  toward  that  darkness  in  front, 
that  nebulous  darkness  scattered  with  hands  and  faces 
and  programs.  Like  Concetta  in  a  great  city,  Sylvia  was 
lost  in  that  darkness;  she  was  Concetta.  It  seemed  to  her 
that  the  applause  at  the  end  was  not  so  much  approval  of 
Concetta  as  a  welcome  to  Mrs.  Gainsborough;  when 
isolated  laughs  and  volleys  of  laughter  came  out  of  the 
darkness  and  were  followed  sometimes  by  the  darkness 
itself  laughing  everywhere,  so  that  O'Hea  looked  up  very 
personally  and  winked  at  her,  then  Sylvia  fell  in  love  with 
her  audience.  The  laughter  increased,  and  suddenly  she 
recognized  at  the  end  of  each  volley  that  Sylvius  and  Rose 
were  supplementing  its  echoes  with  rapturous  echoes  of 
their  own.  She  could  not  see  them,  but  their  gurgles  in  the 
darkness  were  like  a  song  of  nightingales  to  Sylvia.  She 
ceased  to  be  Mrs.  Gainsborough,  and  began  to  say  three  or 
four  of  the  poems.  Then  the  curtain  fell,  and  came  up 
again,  and  fell,  and  came  up  again,  and  fell,  and  came  up 
again. 

Jack  was  standing  beside  her  and  saying: 
"Splendid,  splendid,  splendid,  splendid!" 
"Delighted,  delighted,  delighted,  delighted!" 
"Very  good  audience!     Splendid  audience!    Delighted 
audience!    Success!    Success!    Success!" 

Really,  how  wonderfully  O'Hea  was  playing,  Sylvia 
thought,  and  how  good  that  Debussy  was! 


Sylvia    Scarlett  427 

The  rest  of  the  performance  was  as  mucn  of  a  success  as 
the  beginning.  Perhaps  the  audience  liked  best  Mrs. 
Gowndry  and  the  woman  who  smuggled  lace  from  Belgium 
into  France.  Sylvius  and  Rose  laughed  so  much  at  the 
audience's  laughter  at  Mrs.  Gowndry  that  Sylvius  an- 
nounced in  the  ensuing  lull  that  he  wanted  to  go  some- 
where, a  desire  which  was  naturally  indorsed  by  Rose. 
The  audience  was  much  amused,  because  it  supposed  that 
Sylvius's  wish  was  a  tribute  to  the  profession  of  Mrs. 
Gowndry's  husband,  and  whatever  faint  doubts  existed 
about  the  propriety  of  alluding  in  the  Pierian  Hall  to  a 
lavatory-attendant  were  dispersed. 

Sylvia  forgot  altogether  about  the  audience's  tea  when 
the  curtain  fell  finally.  It  was  difficult  to  think  about 
anything  with  so  many  smiling  people  pressing  round  her 
on  the  stage.  Several  old  friends  came  and  reminded  her 
of  their  existence,  but  there  was  no  one  who  had  quite  such 
a  radiant  smile  as  Arthur  Lonsdale. 

"Lonnie!    How  nice  of  you  to  come!" 

"I  say,  topping,  I  mean.  What?  I  say,  that's  a  most 
extraordinary  back-cloth  you've  got.  What  on  earth  is  it 
supposed  to  be?  It  reminds  me  of  what  you  feel  like  when 
you're  driving  a  car  through  a  strange  town  after  meeting 
a  man  you  haven't  seen  for  some  time  and  who's  just 
found  out  a  good  brand  of  fizz  at  the  hotel  where  he's 
staying.  I  was  afraid  you'd  get  bitten  in  the  back  before 
you'd  finished.  I  say,  Mrs.  Gowndry  was  devilish  good. 
Some  of  the  other  lads  and  lasses  were  a  bit  beyond  me." 

"And  how's  business?" 

"Oh,  very  good.  We've  just  put  the  neatest  little  ninety 
h.  p.  torpedo-body  two-seater  on  the  market.  I'll  tootle 
you  down  to  Brighton  in  it  one  Sunday  morning.  Upon 
my  word,  you'll  scarcely  have  time  to  wrap  yourself  up 
before  you'll  have  to  unwrap  yourself  to  shake  hands  with 
dear  old  Harry  Burnly  coming  out  to  welcome  you  from 
the  Britannia." 

"Not  married  yet,  Lonnie?" 

"No,  not  yet.  Braced  myself  up  to  do  it  the  other  day, 
dived  in,  and  was  seized  with  cramp  at  the  deep  end.  She 
offered  to  be  a  sister  to  me  and  I  sank  like  a  stone.  My 
mother's  making  rather  a  nuisance  of  herself  about  it. 


428  Sylvia    Scarlett 

She  keeps  producing  girls  out  of  her  muff  like  a  conjurer, 
whenever  she  comes  to  see  me.  And  what  girls!  Heather 
mixture  most  of  them,  like  Guggenheim's  Twelfth  of 
August.  I  shall  come  to  it  at  last,  I  suppose.  Mr.  Arthur 
Lonsdale  and  his  bride  leaving  St.  Margaret's,  West- 
minster, under  an  arch  of  spanners  formed  by  grateful 
chauffeurs  whom  the  brilliant  and  handsome  young  bride- 
groom has  recommended  to  many  titled  readers  of  this 
paper.  Well,  so  long,  Sylvia;  there's  a  delirious  crowd  of 
admirers  waiting  for  you.  Send  me  a  line  where  you're 
living  and  we'll  have  a  little  dinner  somewhere — " 

Sylvia's  success  was  not  quite  so  huge  as  in  the  first 
intoxication  of  her  friends'  enthusias.n  she  had  begun  to 
fancy.  However,  it  was  unmistakably  a  success,  and  she 
was  able  to  give  two  recitals  a  week  through  the  autumn, 
with  certainly  the  prospect  of  a  good  music-hall  engage- 
ment for  the  following  spring,  if  she  cared  to  accept  it. 
Most  of  the  critics  discovered  that  she  was  not  as  good  as 
Yvette  Guilbert.  In  view  of  Yvette  Guilbert's  genius,  of 
which  they  were  much  more  firmly  convinced  now  than 
they  would  have  been  when  Yvette  Guilbert  first  ap- 
peared, this  struck  them  as  a  fairly  safe  comparison;  more- 
over, it  gave  their  readers  an  impression  that  they  under- 
stood French,  which  enhanced  the  literary  value  of  their 
criticism.  To  strengthen  this  belief  most  of  them  were 
inclined  to  think  that  the  French  poems  were  the  best 
part  of  Miss  Sylvia  Scarlett's  performance.  One  or  two 
of  the  latter  definitely  recalled  some  of  Yvette  Guilbert's 
early  work,  no  doubt  by  the  number  of  words  they  had  not 
understood,  because  somebody  had  crackled  a  program  or 
had  shuffled  his  feet  or  had  coughed.  As  for  the  English 
character  studies,  or,  as  some  of  them  carried  away  by 
reminiscences  of  Yvette  Guilbert  into  oblivion  of  their  own 
language  preferred  to  call  them,  etudes,  they  had  a  certain 
distinction,  and  in  many  cases  betrayed  signs  of  an  almost 
meticulous  observation,  though  at  the  same  time,  like 
everybody  else  doing  anything  at  the  present  moment 
except  in  France,  they  did  not  have  as  much  distinction  or 
meticulousness  as  the  work  of  forerunners  in  England  or 
contemporaries  abroad.  Still,  that  was  not  to  say  that  the 
work  of  Miss  Sylvia  Scarlett  was  not  highly  promising  and 


Sylvia    Scarlett  429 

of  the  greatest  possible  interest.  The  timbre  of  her  voice 
was  specially  worthy  of  notice  and  justified  the  italics  in 
which  it  was  printed.  Finally,  two  critics,  who  were 
probably  sitting  next  to  each  other,  found  a  misprint  in 
the  program,  no  doubt  in  searching  for  a  translation  of  the 
poems. 

If  Sylvia  fancied  a  lack  of  appreciation  in  the  critics,  all 
her  friends  were  positive  that  they  were  wonderful  notices 
for  a  beginner. 

"Why,  I  think  that's  a  splendid  notice  in  the  Tele- 
graph," said  Olive.  "I  found  it  almost  at  once.  Why,  one 
often  has  to  read  right  through  the  paper  before  one  can 
find  the  notice." 

"  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  the  most  self-inebriated 
egotist  on  earth  ever  read  right  through  the  Daily  Tele- 
graph? I  don't  believe  it.  He'd  have  been  drowned  like 
Narcissus." 

Arthur  pressed  for  a  decision  about  their  marriage,  now 
that  Sylvia  knew  what  she  had  so  long  wanted  to  know; 
but  she  was  wrapped  up  in  ideas  for  improving  her  per- 
formance and  forbade  Arthur  to  mention  the  subject  until 
she  raised  it  herself;  for  the  present  she  was  on  with  a  new 
love  twice  a  week.  Indeed,  they  were  fascinating  to  Syl- 
via, these  audiences  each  with  a  definite  personality  of  its 
own.  She  remembered  how  she  had  scoffed  in  old  days  at 
the  slavish  flattery  of  them  by  her  fellow-actors  and 
actresses;  equally  in  the  old  days  she  had  scoffed  at  love. 
She  wished  that  she  could  feel  toward  Arthur  as  she  felt 
now  toward  her  audiences,  which  were  as  absorbing  as 
children  with  their  little  clevernesses  and  precocities.  The 
difference  between  what  she  was  doing  now  and  what  she 
had  done  formerly  when  she  sang  French  songs  with  an 
English  accent  was  the  difference  between  the  realism  of  an 
old  knotted  towel  that  is  a  baby  and  an  expensive  doll  that 
may  be  a  baby  but  never  ceases  to  be  a  doll.  Formerly  she 
had  been  a  mechanical  thing  and  had  never  given  herself 
because  she  had  possessed  neither  art  nor  truth,  but  merely 
craft  and  accuracy.  She  had  thought  that  the  personality 
was  degraded  by  depending  on  the  favor  of  an  audience. 
All  that  old  self-consciousness  and  false  shame  were  gone. 
She  and  her  audience  communed  through  art  as  spirits 


430  Sylvia    Scarlett 

may  commune  after  death.  In  the  absorption  of  studying 
the  audience  as  a  separate  entity,  Sylvia  forgot  that  it  was 
made  up  of  men  and  women.  When  she  knew  that  any 
friends  of  hers  were  in  front,  they  always  remained  entirely 
separate  in  her  mind  from  the  audience.  Gradually,  how- 
ever, as  the  autumn  advanced,  several  people  from  long 
ago  re-entered  her  life  and  she  began  to  lose  that  feeling  of 
seclusion  from  the  world  and  to  realize  the  gradual  setting 
up  of  barriers  to  her  complete  liberty  of  action.  The  first 
of  these  visitants  was  Miss  Ashley,  who  in  her  peacock- 
blue  gown  looked  much  as  she  had  looked  when  Sylvia  last 
saw  her. 

"I  could  not  resist  coming  round  to  tell  you  how  greatly 
I  enjoyed  your  performance,"  she  said.  "I've  been  so 
sorry  that  you  never  came  to  see  me  all  these  years." 

Sylvia  felt  embarrassed,  because  she  dreaded  presently 
an  allusion  to  her  marriage  with  Philip,  but  Miss  Ashley 
was  too  wise. 

"How's  Hornton  House!"  asked  Sylvia,  rather  timidly. 
It  was  like  inquiring  after  the  near  relation  of  an  old  friend 
who  might  have  died. 

"Just  the  same.  Miss  Primer  is  still  with  me.  Miss 
Hossack  now  has  a  school  of  her  own.  Miss  Pinck  became 
very  ill  with  gouty  rheumatism  and  had  to  retire.  I  won't 
ask  you  about  yourself;  you  told  me  so  much  from  the 
stage.  Now  that  we've  been  able  to  meet  again,  won't  you 
come  and  visit  your  old  school  sometime?" 

Sylvia  hesitated. 

"Please,"  Miss  Ashley  insisted.  "I'm  not  inviting  you 
out  of  politeness.  It  would  really  give  me  pleasure.  I 
have  never  ceased  to  think  about  you  all  these  years. 
Well,  I  won't  keep  you,  for  I'm  sure  you  must  be  tired. 
Do  come.  Tell  me,  Sylvia.  I  should  so  like  to  bring  the 
girls  one  afternoon.  What  would  be  a  good  afternoon  to 
come  ?" 

"You  mean,  when  will  there  be  nothing  in  the  pro- 
gram that — " 

"We  poor  schoolmistresses,"  said  Miss  Ashley,  with  a 
whimsical  look  of  deprecation. 

"Come  on  Saturday  fortnight,  and  afterward  I'll  go 
back  with  you  all  to  Hornton  House.  I'd  love  that." 


Sylvia    Scarlett  431 

So  it  was  arranged. 

On  Wednesday  of  the  following  week  it  happened  that 
there  was  a  particularly  appreciative  audience,  and  Sylvia 
became  so  much  enamoured  of  the  laughter  that  she  ex- 
celled herself.  It  was  an  afternoon  of  perfect  accord,  and 
she  traced  the  source  of  it  to  a  group  somewhere  in  the 
middle  of  the  stalls,  too  far  back  for  her  to  recognize  its 
composition.  After  the  performance  a  pack  of  visiting- 
cards  was  brought  to  the  door  of  her  dressing-room.  She 
read:  "Mrs.  Ian  Campbell,  Mrs.  Ralph  Dennison."  Who 
on  earth  were  they?  "Mr.  Leonard  Worsley" — 

Sylvia  flung  open  the  door,  and  there  they  all  were, 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Worsley,  Gladys  and  Enid,  two  good-look- 
ing men  in  the  background,  two  children  in  the  foreground. 

"Galdys!     Enid!" 

"  Sylvia  !"e 

"Oh,  Sylvia,  you  were  priceless!  Oh,  we  enjoyed  our- 
selves no  end!  You  don't  know  my  husband.  Ian,  come 
and  bow  nicely  to  the  pretty  lady,"  cried  Gladys. 

"Sylvia,  it  was  simply  ripping.  We  laughed  and 
laughed.  Ralph,  come  and  be  introduced,  and  this  is 
Stumpy,  my  boy,"  Enid  cried,  simultaneously. 

"Fancy,  he's  a  grandfather,"  the  daughters  exclaimed, 
dragging  Mr.  Worsley  forward.  He  looked  younger  than 
ever. 

"  Hercules  is  at  Oxford,  or  of  course  he'd  have  come,  too. 
This  is  Proodles,"  said  Gladys,  pointing  to  the  little  girl. 

"Sylvia,  why  did  you  desert  us  like  that?"  Mrs.  Wors- 
ley reproachfully  asked.  "When  are  you  coming  down 
to  stay  with  us  at  Arbor  End  ?  Of  course  the  children  are 
married  .  .  ."  She  broke  off  with  half  a  sigh. 

"Oh,  but  we  can  all  squash  in,"  Gladys  shouted. 

"Oh,  rather,"  Enid  agreed.  "The  kids  can  sleep  in  the 
coal-scuttles.  We  sha'n't  notice  any  difference." 

"Dears,  it's  so  wonderful  to  see  you,"  Sylvia  gasped. 
"But  do  tell  me  who  you  all  are  over  again.  I'm  so 
muddled." 

"I'm  Mrs.  Ian  Campbell,"  Gladys  explained.     "And 

this  is  Ian.     And  this  is  Proodles,  and  at  home  there's 

Groggles,  who's  too  small  for  anything  except  pantomimes. 

And  that's  Mrs.  Ralph  Dennison,  and  that's  Ralph,  and 

28 


432  Sylvia    Scarlett 

that's  Stumpy,  and  at  home  Enid's  got  a  girlie  called 
Barbara.  Mother  hates  being  a  grandmother  four  times 
over,  so  she's  called  Aunt  Victoria,  and  of  course  father's 
still  one  of  the  children.  We've  both  been  married  seven 
years." 

Nothing  had  so  much  brought  home  to  Sylvia  the  flight 
of  time  as  this  meeting  with  Gladys  and  Enid,  who  when 
she  last  saw  them  were  only  sixteen.  It  was  incredible. 
And  they  had  not  forgotten  her;  in  what  seemed  now  a 
century  they  had  not  forgotten  her!  Sylvia  told  them 
about  Miss  Ashley's  visit  and  suggested  that  they  should 
come  and  join  the  party  of  girls  from  Hornton  House. 
It  would  be  fun,  would  it  not?  Miss  Primer  was  still  at 
the  school. 

Gladys  and  Enid  were  delighted  with  the  plan,  and  on 
the  day  fixed  about  twenty  girls  invaded  Sylvia's  dressing- 
room,  shepherded  by  Miss  Primer,  who  was  still  melting 
with  tears  for  Rodrigo's  death  in  the  scene.  Miss  Ashley 
had  brought  the  carriage  to  drive  Sylvia  back,  but  she 
insisted  upon  going  in  a  motor-'bus  with  the  others  and  was 
well  rewarded  by  Miss  Primer's  ecstasies  of  apprehension. 
Sylvia  wandered  with  Gladys  and  Enid  down  well-remem- 
bered corridors,  in  and  out  of  bedrooms  and  class-rooms; 
she  listened  to  resolutions  to  send  Prudence  and  Barbara 
to  Hornton  House  in  a  few  years.  For  Sylvia  it  was  almost 
too  poignant,  the  thought  of  these  families  growing  up  all 
round  her,  while  she,  after  so  many  years,  was  still  really 
as  much  alone  as  she  had  always  been.  The  company  of  all 
these  girls  with  their  slim  black  legs,  their  pigtails  and 
fluffy  hair  tied  back  with  big  bows,  the  absurdly  exagger- 
ated speech  and  the  enlaced  loves  of  girlhood — the  accu- 
mulation of  it  all  was  scarcely  to  be  borne. 

When  Sylvia  visited  Arbor  End  and  talked  once  again 
to  Mrs.  Worsley,  sitting  at  the  foot  of  her  bed,  about  the 
wonderful  lives  of  that  so  closely  self-contained  family, 
the  desolation  of  the  future  came  visibly  nearer;  it  seemed 
imperative  at  whatever  cost  to  drive  it  back. 

Shortly  before  Christmas  a  card  was  brought  round 
to  Sylvia — "Mrs.  Prescott-Merivale,  Hardingham  Hall, 
Hunts." 

"Who  is  it?"  she  asked  her  maid. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  433 

"It's  a  lady,  miss." 

"Well  of  course  I  didn't  suppose  a  cassowary  had  sent 
up  his  card.  What's  she  like?" 

The  maid  strove  to  think  of  some  phrase  that  would 
describe  the  visitor,  but  she  fell  back  hopelessly  upon  her 
original  statement. 

"She's  a  lady,  miss."  Then,  with  a  sudden  radiancy 
lighting  her  eyes,  she  added,  "And  there's  a  little  boy  with 
her." 

"My  entertainment  seems  to  be  turning  into  a  children's 
treat,"  Sylvia  muttered  to  herself.  "Sic  itur  ad  astra" 

"I  beg  your  pardon,  miss,  did  you  say  to  show  her  in?'* 

Sylvia  nodded. 

Presently  a  tall  young  woman  in  the  late  twenties,  with 
large  and  brilliant  gray  eyes,  rose-flushed  and  deep  in  furs, 
came  in,  accompanied  by  an  extraordinarily  handsome 
boy  of  seven  or  eight. 

"How  awfully  good  of  you  to  let  me  waste  a  few  minutes 
of  your  time,"  she  said,  and  as  she  spoke,  Sylvia  had  a 
fleeting  illusion  that  it  was  herself  who  was  speaking,  a 
sensation  infinitely  rapid,  but  yet  sufficiently  clear  to  make 
her  ask  herself  the  meaning  of  it,  and  to  find  in  the  stran- 
ger's hair  the  exact  replica  of  her  own.  The  swift  illusion 
and  the  equally  swift  comparison  were  fled  before  she  had 
finished  inviting  her  visitor  to  sit  down. 

"I  must  explain  who  I  am.  I've  heard  about  you,  oh,  of 
course,  publicly,  but  also  from  my  brother." 

"Your  brother?"  repeated  Sylvia. 

"Yes,  Michael  Fane." 

"He's  not  with  you?" 

"No.  I  wish  he  had  been.  Alas!  he's  gone  off  to  look 
for  a  friend  who,  by  the  way,  I  expect  you  know  also. 
Maurice  Avery?  All  sorts  of  horrid  rumors  about  what 
had  happened  to  him  in  Morocco  were  being  brought  back 
to  us,  so  Michael  went  off  last  spring,  and  has  been  with 
him  ever  since." 

"But  I  thought  he  was  a  monk,"  Sylvia  said. 

Mrs.  Merivale  laughed  with  what  seemed  rather  like 
relief.  "No,  he's  neither  priest  nor  monk,  thank  good- 
ness, though  the  prospect  still  hangs  over  us." 

"After  all  these  years?"  Sylvia  asked,  in  astonishment. 


434  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Oh,  my  dear  Miss  Scarlett,  don't  forget  the  narrow 
way  is  also  long.  But  I  didn't  come  to  talk  to  you  about 
Michael.  I  simply  most  shamelessly  availed  myself  of  his 
having  met  you  a  long  time  ago  to  give  myself  an  excuse 
for  talking  to  you  about  your  performance.  Of  course  it's 
absolutely  great.  How  lucky  you  are!" 

"Lucky?"  Sylvia  could  not  help  glancing  at  the  hand- 
some boy  beside  her. 

"He's  rather  a  lamb,  isn't  he?"  Mrs.  Merivale  agreed. 
"But  you  started  all  sorts  of  old,  forgotten,  hidden-away, 
burned-out  fancies  of  mine  this  afternoon,  and — you  see,  I 
intended  to  be  a  professional  pianist  once,  but  I  got  mar- 
ried instead.  Much  better,  really,  because,  unless —  Oh, 
I  don't  know.  Yes,  I  am  jealous  of  you.  You've  picked 
me  up  and  put  me  down  again  where  I  was  once.  Now 
the  conversation's  backed  into  me,  and  I  really  do  want  to 
talk  about  you.  Your  performance  is  the  kind  about 
which  one  wonders  why  nobody  ever  did  it  before.  That's 
the  greatest  compliment  one  can  pay  an  artist,  I  think. 
All  great  art  is  the  great  expression  of  a  great  common- 
place; that's  why  it  always  looks  so  easy.  I  do  hope 
you're  having  the  practical  success  you  deserve." 

"Yes,  I  think  I  shall  be  all  right,"  Sylvia  said.  "Only,  I 
expect  that  after  the  New-Year  I  shall  have  to  cut  my 
show  considerably  and  take  a  music-hall  engagement. 
I'm  not  making  a  fortune  at  the  Pierian." 

"How  horrid  for  you!  How  I  should  love  to  play  with 
you!  Oh  dear!  It's  heartrending  to  say  it,  but  it's  much 
too  late.  Well,  I  mustn't  keep  you.  You've  given  me 
such  tremendous  pleasure  and  just  as  much  pain  with  it  as 
makes  the  pleasure  all  the  sharper.  .  .  .  I'll  write  and  tell 
Michael  about  you." 

"I  expect  he's  forgotten  my  name  by  now,"  Sylvia  said. 

"Oh  no,  he  never  forgets  anybody,  even  in  the  throes  of 
theological  speculation.  Good-by.  I  see  that  this  is  your 
last  performance  for  the  present.  I  shall  come  and  hear 
you  again  when  you  reopen.  How  odious  about  music- 
halls.  You  ought  to  have  called  yourself  Silvia  Scarletti, 
told  your  press  agent  that  you  were  the  direct  descendant 
of  the  composer,  vowed  that  when  you  came  to  England 
six  months  ago  you  could  speak  nothing  but  Polish,  and 


Sylvia    Scarlett  435 

you  could  have  filled  the  Pierian  night  and  day  for  a  year. 
We're  queer  people,  we  English.  I  think,  you  know,  it's  a 
kind  of  shyness,  the  way  we  treat  native  artists.  You  get 
the  same  thing  in  families.  It's  not  really  that  the  prophet 
has  no  honor,  etc.;  it  really  is,  I  believe,  a  fear  of  boasting, 
which  would  be  such  bad  form,  wouldn't  it?  Of  course 
we've  ruined  ourselves  as  a  nation  by  our  good  manners 
and  our  sense  of  humor.  Why,  we've  even  insisted  that 
what  native  artists  we  do  support  shall  be  gentlemen  first 
and  artists  second.  In  what  other  country  could  an  actor 
be  knighted  for  his  trousers  or  an  author  for  his  wife's 
dowry?  Good-by.  I  do  wish  you  great,  great  success." 

"Anyway,  I  can't  be  knighted,"  Sylvia  laughed. 

"Oh,  don't  be  too  sure.  A  nation  that  has  managed  to 
turn  its  artists  into  gentlemen  will  soon  insist  on  turning 
its  women  into  gentlemen,  too,  or  at  any  rate  on  securing 
their  good  manners  in  some  way." 

"Women  will  never  really  have  good  manners,"  Sylvia 
said. 

"No,  thank  God.  There  you're  right.  Well,  good-by. 
It's  been  so  jolly  to  talk  to  you,  and  again  I've  loved  every 
moment  of  this  afternoon.  Charles,"  she  added  to  the 
handsome  boy,  "after  bragging  about  your  country's  good 
manners,  let's  see  you  make  a  decent  bow." 

He  inclined  his  head  with  a  grave  courtesy,  opened  the 
door  for  his  mother,  and  followed  her  out. 

The  visit  of  Michael's  sister,  notwithstanding  that  she 
had  envied  Sylvia's  luck,  left  her  with  very  little  opinion  of 
it  herself.  What  was  her  success,  after  all?  A  temporary 
elation  dependent  upon  good  health  and  the  public  taste, 
financially  uncertain,  emotionally  wearing,  radically  un- 
satisfying and  insecure,  for,  however  good  her  performance 
was,  it  was  always  mummery,  really,  as  near  as  mummery 
could  get  to  creative  work,  perhaps,  but  mortal  like  its 
maker. 

"Sad  to  think  this  is  the  last  performance  here,"  said 
her  maid. 

Sylvia  agreed  with  her.  It  was  a  relief  to  find  a  peg  on 
which  to  hang  the  unreasonable  depression  that  was 
weighing  her  down.  She  passed  out  of  her  dressing-room. 
As  the  stage  door  swung  to  behind  her  a  figure  stepped  into 


436  Sylvia    Scarlett 

the  lamplight  of  the  narrow  court;  it  was  Jimmy  Monkley. 
The  spruceness  had  left  him;  all  the  color,  too,  had  gone 
from  his  face,  which  was  now  sickly  white — an  evil  face 
with  its  sandy  mustache  streaked  with  gray  and  its  luster- 
less  green  eyes.  Sylvia  was  afraid  that  from  the  way  she 
started  back  from  him  he  would  think  that  she  scorned 
him  for  having  been  in  prison,  and  with  an  effort  she  tried 
to  be  cordial. 

"You've  done  damned  well  for  yourself,"  he  said,  paying 
no  attention  to  what  she  was  saying.  She  found  this  meet- 
ing overwhelmingly  repulsive  and  moved  toward  her  taxi. 
It  was  seeming  to  her  that  Monkley  had  the  power  to 
snatch  her  away  and  plunge  her  back  into  that  life  of 
theirs.  She  would  really  rather  have  met  Philip  than  him. 

"Damned  well  for  yourself,"  he  repeated. 

"I'm  sorry  I  can't  stay.  I'm  in  a  hurry.  I'm  in  a 
hurry." 

She  reached  the  taxi  and  slammed  the  door  in  his  face. 

This  unexpected  meeting  convinced  Sylvia  of  the  neces- 
sity of  attaching  herself  finally  to  a  life  that  would  make 
the  resurrection  of  a  Monkley  nothing  more  influential 
than  a  nightmare.  She  knew  that  she  was  giving  way  to 
purely  nervous  fears  in  being  thus  affected  by  what,  had 
she  stopped  to  think,  was  the  natural  result  of  her  name's 
becoming  known.  But  the  liability  to  nervous  fears  was  in 
itself  an  argument  that  something  was  wrong.  When  had 
she  ever  been  a  prey  to  such  hysteria  before?  When  had 
she  allowed  herself  to  be  haunted  by  a  face,  as  now  she  was 
being  haunted  by  Monkley's  face?  Suppose  he  had  seated 
himself  behind  the  taxi  and  that  when  she  reached  the 
Airdales'  house  he  should  once  more  be  standing  on  the 
pavement  in  the  lamplight? 

In  Brompton  Road  Sylvia  told  the  driver  to  stop.  She 
wanted  to  do  some  Christmas  shopping.  After  an  hour  or 
more  spent  among  toys  she  came  out  with  a  porter  loaded 
with  packages,  and  looked  round  her  quickly;  but  of 
course  he  was  not  upon  the  pavement.  How  absurd  she 
had  been!  In  any  case,  what  could  Monkley  do?  She 
would  forget  all  about  him.  To-morrow  was  Christmas 
Eve.  There  was  going  to  be  such  a  jolly  party  at  the  Air- 
dales'.  The  taxi  hummed  toward  West  Kensington. 


Sylvia    Scarlett  437 

Sylvia  leaned  back,  huddled  up  with  her  thougnts,  until 
they  reached  Lillie  Road.  She  passed  Mrs.  Meares's 
house  so  many  times  without  giving  it  a  second  look.  Now 
she  found  herself  peering  out  into  the  thickening  fog  in 
case  Monkley  should  be  standing  upon  the  door-step.  She 
was  glad  when  she  reached  the  Airdales'  house,  warm  and 
bright,  festooned  with  holly  and  mistletoe.  There  were 
pleasant  little  household  noises  everywhere,  comfortable 
little  noises,  and  a  rosy  glow  from  the  silken  shades  of  the 
lamps;  the  carpet  was  so  quiet  and  the  parlor-maid  in  a 
clean  cap  and  apron  so  efficient,  so  quick  to  get  in  all  the 
parcels  and  shut  out  the  foggy  night. 

Olive  was  already  in  the  drawing-room,  and  because  this 
was  to  be  a  specially  unceremonious  evening  in  preparation 
for  the  party  to-morrow,  Olive  was  in  a  pink  tea-gown  that 
blended  with  the  prettiness  of  her  cozy  house  and  made  her 
more  essentially  a  part  of  it  all.  How  bleak  was  her  own 
background  in  comparison  with  this,  Sylvia  thought. 
Jack  was  dining  out  most  unwillingly  and  had  left  a  great 
many  pleas  to  be  forgiven  by  Sylvia  on  the  first  night  of 
her  Christmas  visit.  After  dinner  they  sat  in  the  drawing- 
room,  and  Sylvia  told  Olive  about  her  meeting  with 
Monkley.  She  said  nothing  about  Michael  Fane's  sister; 
that  meeting  did  not  seem  to  have  any  bearing  upon  the 
subject  she  wanted  to  discuss. 

"Can  you  understand,"  Sylvia  asked,  "being  almost 
frightened  into  marriage?" 

"Yes,  I  think  so,"  Olive  replied,  as  judicially  as  the 
comfort  of  her  surroundings  would  allow.  It  was  impossi- 
ble to  preserve  a  critical  attitude  in  this  room;  in  such  a 
suave  and  genial  atmosphere  one  accepted  anything. 

"Well,  do  you  still  object  to  my  marrying  Arthur?" 
Sylvia  demanded. 

"But,  my  dear,  I  never  objected  to  your  marrying  him. 
I  may  have  suggested,  when  I  first  saw  him,  that  he  seemed 
rather  too  much  the  type  of  the  ordinary  actor  for  you, 
but  that  was  only  because  you  yourself  had  always  scoffed 
at  actors  so  haughtily.  Since  I've  known  him  I've  grown 
to  like  him.  Please  don't  think  I  ever  objected  to  your 
marrying  him.  I  never  felt  more  sure  about  anybody's 
knowing  her  own  mind  than  I  do  about  you." 


438  Sylvia    Scarlett 

"Well,  I  am  going  to  marry  him,"  Sylvia  said. 

"  Darling  Sylvia,  why  do  you  say  it  so  defiantly  ?  Every- 
body will  be  delighted.  Jack  was  talking  only  the  other 
day  about  his  perpetual  dread  that  you'd  never  give 
yourself  a  chance  of  establishing  your  position  finally, 
because  you  were  so  restless." 

Sylvia  contemplated  an  admission  to  Olive  of  having 
lived  with  Arthur  for  a  year  in  America,  but  in  this  room 
the  fact  had  an  ugly  look  and  seemed  to  belong  rather  to 
that  evil  face  of  the  past  that  had  confronted  her  with  such 
ill  omen  this  evening,  rather  than  to  anything  so  homely  as 
marriage. 

"Arthur  may  not  be  anything  more  than  an  actor,"  she 
went  on.  "But  in  my  profession  what  else  do  I  want? 
He  has  loved  me  for  a  long  time;  I'm  very  fond  of  him. 
It's  essential  that  I  should  have  a  background  so  that  I 
shall  never  be  shaken  out  of  my  self-possession  by  anything 
like  this  evening's  encounter.  I've  lived  a  life  of  feverish 
energy,  and  it's  only  since  the  improvisations  that  I  can 
begin  to  believe  it  wasn't  all  wasted.  I  made  a  great 
mistake  when  I  was  seventeen,  and  when  I  was  nineteen  I 
tried  to  repair  it  with  a  still  greater  mistake.  Then  came 
Lily;  she  was  a  mistake.  Oh,  when  I  look  back  at  it  all, 
it's  nothing  but  mistake  after  mistake.  I  long  for  such 
funny  ordinary  little  pleasures.  Olive  darling,  I've  tried, 
I've  tried  to  think  I  can  do  without  love,  without  children, 
without  family,  without  friends.  I  can't." 

The  tears  were  running  swiftly,  and  all  the  time  more 
swiftly,  do\vn  Sylvia's  cheeks  while  she  was  speaking. 
Olive  jumped  up  from  her  soft  and  quilted  chair  and  knelt 
beside  her  friend. 

"My  darling  Sylvia,  you  have  friends,  you  have,  indeed 
you  have." 

"I  know,"  Sylvia  went  on.  "It's  ungrateful  of  me. 
Why,  if  it  hadn't  been  for  you  and  Jack  I  should  have  gone 
mad.  But  just  because  you're  so  happy  together,  and 
because  you  have  Sylvius  and  Rose,  and  because  I  flit 
about  on  the  outskirts  of  it  all  like  a  timid,  friendly,  soli- 
tary ghost,  I  must  have  some  one  to  love  me.  I've  really 
treated  Arthur  very  badly.  I've  kept  him  waiting  now  for 
a  year.  I  wasn't  brave  enough  to  let  him  go,  and  I  wasn't 


Sylvia    Scarlett  439 

brave  enough  to  marry  him.  I've  never  been  undecided 
in  my  life.  It  must  be  that  the  gipsy  in  me  has  gone  for- 
ever, I  think.  This  success  of  mine  has  been  leading  all  the 
time  to  settling  down  properly.  Most  of  the  people  who 
came  back  to  me  out  of  the  past  were  the  nice  people,  like 
my  old  mistress  and  the  grown-up  twins,  and  I  want  to  be 
like  them.  Oh,  Olive,  I'm  so  tired  of  being  different,  of 
people  thinking  that  I'm  hard  and  brutal  and  cynical.  I'm 
not.  Indeed  I'm  not.  I  couldn't  have  felt  that  truly 
appalling  horror  of  Monkley  this  evening  if  I  were  really 
bad." 

"Sylvia  dear,  you're  working  yourself  up  needlessly. 
How  can  you  say  that  you're  bad  ?  How  can  you  say  such 
things  about  yourself?  You're  not  religious,  perhaps." 

"Listen,  Olive,  if  I  marry  Arthur  I  swear  I'll  make  it  a 
success.  You  know  that  I  have  a  strong  will.  I'm  not 
going  to  criticize  him.  I'm  simply  determined  to  make 
him  and  myself  happy.  It's  very  easy  to  love  him,  really. 
He's  like  a  boy — very  weak,  you  know — but  with  all  sorts 
of  charming  qualities,  and  his  mother  would  be  so  glad  if  it 
were  all  settled.  Olive,  I  meant  to  tell  you  a  whole  heap 
of  things  about  myself,  about  what  I've  done,  but  I  won't. 
I'm  going  to  forget  it  all  and  be  happy.  I'm  glad  it's 
Christmas-time.  I've  bought  such  ripping  things  for  the 
kids.  When  I  was  buying  them  to-night  there  came  into 
my  head  almost  my  first  adventure  when  I  was  a  very  little 
girl  and  thought  I'd  found  a  ten-franc  piece  which  was 
really  the  money  I'd  been  given  for  the  marketing.  I  had 
just  such  an  orgy  of  buying  to-night.  Did  you  know  that  a 
giraffe  could  make  a  noise?  Well,  it  can,  or  at  any  rate  the 
giraffe  I  bought  for  Sylvius  can.  You  twist  its  neck  and  it 
protests  like  a  bronchial  calf." 

The  party  on  Christmas  Eve  was  a  great  success.  Lu- 
cian  Hope  burnt  a  hole  in  the  table-cloth  with  what  was 
called  a  drawing-room  firework.  Jack  split  his  coat  trying 
to  hide  inside  his  bureau.  Arthur,  sitting  on  a  bottle  with 
his  legs  crossed,  lit  a  candle,  twice  running.  The  little  red- 
haired  singer  found  the  ring  in  the  pudding.  Sylvia  found 
the  sixpence.  Nobody  found  the  button,  so  it  must  have 
been  swallowed.  It  was  a  splendid  party.  Sylvius  and 
Rose  did  not  begin  to  cry  steadily  until  after  ten  o'clock. 


440  Sylvia    Scarlett 

When  the  guests  were  getting  ready  to  leave,  about  two 
o'clock  on  Christmas  morning,  and  while  Lucian  Hope 
was  telling  everybody  in  turn  that  somebody  must  have 
swallowed  the  button  inadvertently,  to  prove  that  he  was 
quite  able  to  pronounce  "inadvertently,"  Sylvia  took 
Arthur  down  the  front-door  steps  and  walked  with  him  a 
little  way  along  the  foggy  street. 

"Arthur,  I'll  marry  you  when  you  like,"  she  said,  laying 
a  hand  upon  his  arm. 

"Sylvia,  what  a  wonderful  Christmas  present!" 

"To  us  both,"  she  whispered. 

Then  on  an  impulse  she  dragged  him  back  to  the  house 
and  proclaimed  their  engagement,  which  meant  the  open- 
ing of  new  bottles  of  champagne  and  the  drinking  of  so 
many  healths  that  it  was  three  o'clock  before  the  party 
broke  up.  Nor  was  there  any  likelihood  of  anybody's 
being  able  to  say  "inadvertently"  by  the  time  he  had 
reached  the  corner  of  the  street. 

Arthur  had  begged  Sylvia  to  come  down  to  Dulwich  on 
Christmas  day,  and  Mrs.  Madden  rejoiced  over  the 
decision  they  had  reached  at  last.  There  were  one  or  two 
thingsto  beconsidered,the  most  important  of  which  wasthe 
question  of  money.  Sylvia  had  spent  the  last  penny  of  what 
wasleftof  Morera'smoneyinlaunchingherself,andsheowed 
nearlytwohundred  pounds  besides.  Arthurhadsavednoth- 
ing.  Both  of  them,  however,  had  been  offered  good  engage- 
ments for  the  spring,  Arthur  to  tour  as  lead  in  one  of  the 
Vanity  productions,  which  might  mean  an  engagement  at 
the  Vanity  itself  in  the  autumn;  Sylvia  to  play  a  twenty 
minutes'  turn  at  all  the  music-halls  of  a  big  circuit.  It 
seemed  unsatisfactory  to  marry  and  immediately  after- 
ward to  separate,  and  they  decided  each  to  take  the  work 
that  had  been  offered,  to  save  all  the  money  possible,  and 
to  aim  at  both  playing  in  London  next  autumn,  but  in  any 
case  to  be  married  in  early  June  when  the  tours  would  end. 
They  should  then  have  a  couple  of  months  to  themselves. 
Mrs.  Madden  wanted  them  to  be  married  at  once;  but  the 
other  way  seemed  more  prudent,  and  Sylvia,  having  once 
made  up  her  mind,  was  determined  to  be  practical  and  not 
to  run  the  risk  of  spoiling  by  financial  worries  the  begin- 
ning of  their  real  life  together.  Her  marriage  in  its  orderli- 


Sylvia    Scarlett  441 

ness  and  forethought  and  simplicity  of  intention  was  to 
compensate  for  everything  that  had  gone  before.  Mrs. 
Madden  thought  they  were  both  of  them  being  too 
deliberate,  but  then  she  had  run  away  once  with  her 
father's  groom  and  must  have  had  a  fundamentally  im- 
pulsive, even  a  reckless  temperament. 

The  engagement  was  announced  with  an  eye  to  the  most 
advantageous  publicity  that  is  the  privilege  of  being 
servants  of  the  public.  One  was  able  to  read  everywhere 
of  a  theatrical  romance  or  more  coldly  of  a  forthcoming 
theatrical  marriage;  nearly  all  the  illustrated  weeklies 
had  two  little  oval  photographs  underneath  which  ran  the 
legend: 

INTERESTING   ENGAGEMENT 

We  learn  that  Miss  Sylvia  Scarlett,  who  recently  registered  such 
an  emphatic  success  in  her  original  entertainment  at  the  Pierian  Hall, 
will  shortly  wed  Mr.  Arthur  Madden,  whom  many  of  our  readers  will 
remember  for  his  rendering  of  "Somebody  is  sitting  in  the  sunset"  at 
the  Frivolity  Theater. 

In  one  particularly  intimate  paper  was  a  short  interview 
headed: 

ACTRESS'S  DELIGHTFUL  CANDOR 

"No,"  said  Miss  Scarlett  to  our  representative  who  had  called  upon 
the  clever  and  original  young  performer  to  ascertain  when  her  marriage 
with  Mr.  Arthur  Madden  of  "Somebody  is  sitting  in  the  sunset"  fame 
would  take  place.  "No,  Arthur  and  I  have  decided  to  wait  till  June. 
Frankly,  we  can't  afford  to  be  married  yet  .  .  ." 


and  so  on,  with  what  was  described  as  a  portrait  of  Miss 
Sylvia  Scarlet  inset,  but  which  without  the  avowal  would 

Erobably  have  been  taken  for  the  thumbprint  of  a  paper- 
oy. 

"This  is  all  terribly  vulgar,"  Sylvia  bewailed,  but  Jack, 
Arthur,  and  Olive  were  all  firm  in  the  need  for  thorough 
advertisement,  and  she  acquiesced  woefully.  In  January 
she  and  Arthur  parted  for  their  respective  tours.  Jack, 
before  she  went  away,  begged  Sylvia  for  the  fiftieth  time  to 
take  back  the  money  she  had  settled  on  her  godchildren. 
He  argued  with  her  until  she  got  angry. 

"Jack,  if  you  mention  that  again  I'll  never  come  to  your 


442  Sylvia    Scarlett 

house  any  more.  One  of  the  most  exquisite  joys  in  all  my 
life  was  when  I  was  able  to  do  that,  and  when  you  and 
Olive  were  sweet  enough  to  let  me,  for  you  really  were 
sweet  and  simple  in  those  days  and  not  purse-proud  bour- 
geois, as  you  are  now.  Please,  Jack!"  She  had  tears  in  her 
eyes.  "Don't  be  unkind." 

"But  supposing  you  have  children  of  your  own?"  he 
urged. 

"Jack,  don't  go  on.  It  really  upsets  me.  I  cannot  bear 
the  idea  of  that  money's  belonging  to  anybody  but  the 
twins." 

"Did  you  tell  Arthur?" 

"It's  nothing  to  do  with  Arthur.  It's  only  to  do  with 
me.  It  was  my  present.  It  was  made  before  Arthur  came 
on  the  scene." 

With  great  unwillingness  Jack  obeyed  her  command  not 
to  say  anything  more  on  the  subject. 

Sylvia  earned  a  good  enough  salary  to  pay  off  nearly  all 
her  debts  by  May,  when  her  tour  brought  her  to  the 
suburban  music-halls  and  she  was  able  to  amuse  herself  by 
house-hunting  for  herself  and  Arthur.  All  her  friends, 
and  not  the  least  old  ones  like  Gladys  and  Enid,  took  a 
profound  interest  in  her  approaching  marriage.  Wedding- 
presents  even  began  to  arrive.  The  most  remarkable 
omen  of  the  gods'  pleasure  was  a  communication  she  re- 
ceived in  mid-May  from  Miss  Dashwood's  solicitors  to  say 
that  Miss  Dashwood  had  died  and  had  left  to  Sylvia  in  her 
will  the  freehold  of  Mulberry  Cottage  with  all  it  contained. 
Olive  was  enraptured  with  her  good  fortune,  and  wanted 
to  telegraph  to  Arthur,  who  was  in  Leeds  that  week;  but 
Sylvia  said  she  would  rather  write: 

DEAREST  ARTHUR, — You  remember  my  telling  you  about  Mulberry 
Cottage?  Well,  the  most  wonderful  thing  has  happened.  That  old 
darling,  Miss  Dashwood,  the  sister  of  Mrs.  Gainsborough's  captain, 
has  left  it  to  me  with  everything  in  it.  It  has  of  course  for  me  all  sorts 
of  memories,  and  I  want  to  tell  you  very  seriously  that  I  regard  it  as  a 
sign,  yes,  really  a  sign  of  my  wanderings  and  restlessness  being  forever 
finished.  It  seems  to  me  somehow  to  consecrate  our  marriage.  Don't 
think  I'm  turning  religious:  I  shall  never  do  that.  Oh  no,  never!  But 
I  can't  help  being  moved  by  what  to  you  may  seem  only  a  coincidence. 
Arthur,  you  must  forgive  me  for  the  way  in  which  I've  often  treated 
you.  You  mustn't  think  that  because  I've  always  bullied  you  in  the 


Sylvia    Scarlett  443 

past  I'm  always  going  to  in  the  future.  If  you  want  me  now,  I'm  yours 
really,  much  more  than  I  ever  was  in  America,  much,  much  more.  You 
shall  be  happy  with  me.  Oh,  it's  such  a  dear  house  with  a  big  garden, 
for  London  a  very  big  garden,  and  it  held  once  two  such  true  hearts. 
Do  you  see  the  foolish  tears  smudging  the  ink?  They're  my  tears  for  so 
much.  I'm  going  to-morrow  morning  to  dust  our  house.  Think  of  me 
when  you  get  this  letter  as  really  at  last 

Your 

SYLVIA. 

The  next  morning  arrived  a  letter  from  Leeds,  which 
had  crossed  hers: 

MY  DEAR  SYLVIA, — I  don't  know  how  to  tell  you  what  I  must  tell. 
I  was  married  this  morning  to  Maimie  Vernon.  I  don't  know  how  I  let 
myself  fall  in  love  with  her.  I  never  looked  at  hur  when  she  sang  at  the 
Pierian  with  you.  But  she  got  an  engagement  in  this  company  and — 
well,  you  know  the  way  things  happen  on  tour.  The  only  thing  that 
makes  me  feel  not  an  absolutely  hopeless  cad  is  that  I've  a  feeling  some- 
how that  you  were  going  to  marry  me  more  out  of  kindness  and  pity 
than  out  of  love. 

Forgive  me. 

ARTHUR. 

"That  funny  little  red-haired  girl!"  Sylvia  gasped. 
Then  like  a  surging  wave  the  affront  to  her  pride  over- 
whelmed her.  With  an  effort  she  looked  at  her  other 
letters.  One  was  from  Michael  Fane's  sister: 

HARDINGHAM  HALL, 
HUNTS, 

May,  1914. 

DEAR  Miss  SCARLETT, — My  brother  is  back  in  England  and  so  anx- 
ious to  meet  you  again.  I  know  you're  playing  near  town  at  present. 
Couldn't  you  possibly  come  down  next  Sunday  morning  and  stay  till 
Monday?  It  would  give  us  the  greatest  pleasure. 

Yours  sincerely, 

STELLA  PRESCOTT-MERIVALE. 

"Never,"  Sylvia  cried,  tearing  the  letter  into  small 
pieces.  "Ah  no!  That,  never,  never!" 

She  left  her  rooms,  and  went  to  Mulberry  Cottage.  The 
caretaker  fluttered  round  her  to  show  her  sense  of  Sylvia's 
importance  as  her  new  mistress.  Was  there  nothing  that 
she  could  do?  Was  there  nothing  that  she  could  get  ? 

Sylvia  sat  on  the  seat  under  the  mulberry-tree  in  the 
still  morning  sunlight  of  May.  It  was  impossible  to  think, 


444  Sylvia    Scarlett 

impossible  to  plan,  impossible,  impossible.  The  ideas  in 
her  brain  went  slowly  round  and  round.  Nothing  would 
stop  them.  Round  and  round  they  went,  getting  every 
moment  more  mixed  up  with  one  another.  But  gradually 
from  the  confusion  one  idea  emerged,  sharp,  strong,  insist- 
ent— she  must  leave  England.  The  moment  this  idea 
had  stated  itself,  Sylvia  could  think  of  nothing  but  the 
swiftness  and  secrecy  of  her  departure.  She  felt  that  if  one 
person  should  ever  fling  a  glance  of  sympathy  or  condo- 
lence or  pity  or  even  of  mild  affection,  she  should  kill  her- 
self to  set  free  her  outraged  soul.  She  made  no  plans  for 
the  future.  She  had  no  reproaches  for  Arthur.  She  had 
nothing  but  the  urgency  of  flight  as  from  the  Furies  them- 
selves. Quickly  she  went  back  to  her  rooms  and  packed. 
All  her  big  luggage  she  took  to  Mulberry  Cottage  and 
placed  with  the  caretaker.  She  sent  a  sum  of  money  to  the 
solicitors  and  asked  them  to  pay  the  woman  until  she 
came  back. 

At  the  last  moment,  in  searching  through  her  trunks,  she 
found  the  yellow  shawl  that  was  wrapped  round  her  few 
treasures  of  ancestry.  She  was  going  to  leave  it  behind, 
but  on  second  thought  she  packed  it  in  the  only  trunk  she 
took  with  her.  She  was  going  back  perhaps  to  the  life  of 
which  these  treasures  were  the  only  solid  pledge. 

"This  time,  yes,  I'm  off  with  the  raggle-taggle  gipsies  in 
deadly  earnest.  Charing  Cross,"  she  told  the  taxi-driver. 


THE   END 


^ 


University  of  California 

SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 

405  Hilgard  Avenue,  Los  Angeles,  CA  90024-1388 

Return  this  material  to  the  library 

from  which  it  was  borrowed. 


JAN  15 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


ii  i     i    ii     M     ii  i     i    ii  i    i    ii  i in    in  in   HI 

UNIVERSITY  OF  C  A      000  102  797      8 


